Divine Priming and its Effects on Charitable Behavior

Divine  Priming  and  its  Effects  on  Charitable  

Behavior

By

Tarek  Saad  Abou  Chakra

University  of  Groningen

1. Introduction

Most of us would like to believe that we are consciously and rationally in control of our decision making (Wegner, 2005). Imagine yourself taking a walk around town on a sunny Sunday morning. While walking, you notice the sound of church bells tolling in the distance, you casually acknowledge them but make nothing of it. A few moments later you are approached by two people asking you for a couple of minutes of your time, and since there’s nothing urgent you need to tend to, you accept. They start explaining their plight to you, and that they work for a charity that helps feed starving children in Africa, and that any donation you choose to make will help their cause. You decide to donate some money to their charity, but did the church bells subconsciously influence your decision in how much you chose to donate? Had you been a more religious person, would the church bells have affected your decision even more? If you were an atheist and a non-spiritual person, would the church bells affect your decision at all? Questions that are similar to these will be explored and explained in this research.

In psychology, thought processes have been extensively studied, and most of them are seemingly automatic (Bargh, 1997*). When exposed to certain stimuli, people become activated in response to the stimuli, and their conscious decision making efforts are strongly influenced by the stimuli observed subconsciously (Dijksterhuis, 2001). In varying contexts, this effect has been thoroughly studied using priming, an experimental means of activating such subconscious thoughts after exposure to certain stimuli to assess responses. After being primed with the elderly, primed participants were shown to walk slower than the control group (Bargh, 1997). When primed with God concepts, respondents had decreased feelings of authorship in certain events (Dijksterhuijs, 2005). All these studies show that we are, in fact, a lot less in control of our decisions and behavior than we’d like to believe.

should increase charitable contribution as well. However, it has been shown that when money is involved, as is the case when donating to charities, people tend to be more selfish, and behave in a less co-operative way (Vohs, 2006). These two mechanisms, divine priming, paired with the involvement of money, work in opposite directions. Divine priming pulls people towards being prosocial, while money pulls people towards being more pro-self. It is motivating to understand whether divine priming is able to trump the selfishness brought on by the involvement of money.

Although prosocial behavior has been extensively studied in a divine priming context, this study aims to fill the gap in current available research concerning prosociality in a monetary context, where there is no published research. Since the involvement of money changes people’s attitudes and decreases helpfulness and co-operation (Vohs, 2006), it is pertinent to establish whether there is also a link between divine priming and charitable contributions, since charitable contributions involve money.

Religiosity and the extent of one’s religious belief has varying and contradictory effects on the impact of divine priming on prosocial behavior. While some studies reveal that yes, religiosity does affect the power of the divine priming (Sharrif, 2007); (Gervais, 2010), other studies reveal that religiosity has no significant impact on the divine priming (Toburen, 2010); (Randolph-Seng, 2007). The mechanisms behind these results aren’t conclusive and have not been well studied, and this study intends to shed more light on the impact of religiosity on divine priming in a monetary prosocial context in order to facilitate further research in the field. Even though research involving divine priming with religiosity as a moderator is available, the fact that it is inconclusive and offers varying results and interpretations makes it an interesting area to delve further into. This research discusses how adding monetary value to prosocial behavior influences religiosity’s effects in the relationship between divine priming and prosocial behavior.

2. Literature review and hypotheses

2.1

Figure 1

Figure 1 summarizes the relationships that will be studied in the subsequent parts of this paper. The independent variable, divine priming, positively influences donation intentions among participants. This means that participants primed with the divine will more likely intend to donate and donate more money to a charitable cause when compared to those who aren’t primed. Religiosity moderates this relationship. Participants with a higher religiosity score will likely be more positively affected by divine priming and hence more likely to intend to donate higher amounts. The assumptions behind these proposed relationships as well as the constructs themselves are clarified in the ensuing text.

In his critical examination of current literature pertaining to divine priming and prosocial behavior, Galen (2012) observes that a variable not properly accounted for is the religious background of participants. Religious background is defined as essentially the religion one is

Divine  Priming   Donation  

born with, and not necessarily practices or adheres to. People from varying religious backgrounds may react differently to divine priming due to subconscious cues and heuristics embedded within them that are associated with their respective religious backgrounds. As such, religious background will be controlled for in this research.

Another potential confounding variable would be the effect of wealth and income, and thus will also be a control variable in this study. Piff et al (2010) managed to conclude that people with less income and wealth are in fact more like to donate, and donate larger sums than their wealthier counterparts. While this may seem counter-intuitive, as people with more money can afford to donate more, it seems that the opposite occurs. A possible explanation given by the researchers regarding this interesting phenomenon is that people with lower income and less wealth empathize more with the unfortunate, and hence are likely to donate more. Conversely, the wealthier expect other people to be able to sustain themselves, and are hence less likely to donate.

Interestingly, gender has been also shown to have an influence on donations and charitable contribution. Females, in fact, are shown to donate significantly larger sums to charities than males (Bolton, 1995). The researchers go on to explain that perhaps the female gender is instinctively equipped with a heightened sense of empathy, which may be the reason behind the larger sums and higher frequency of donations. Gender will also be a control variable in this research.

2.2

how they relate to the divine. To clarify, religion pertains chiefly towards the main concerns of people and gives them a sense of personal identity, while also tying them to a social circle within the context of their religion. Beyond that, religion also establishes the proper or correct way for someone to behave, as well as having people commit to practices tied with their religion (Marty, 1991). Spirituality, on the other hand, comprises the act of searching for a deeper meaning in one’s life. It can signify an encounter with the divine, and involve a personal transformation. Spirituality also includes an appreciation for the enigmatic nature of our creation (Lapierre, 1994). What unifies both the religious and the spiritual is a search for the divine: a divine truth, a divine object, or a divine entity (Hill, 2000). Religions are geared towards either a higher power, or a higher purpose, both of which are regarded as divine in nature. Recently, religions are seen as rigid structures that refer mainly to the religious institution rather than the abstract belief in a divine entity, higher power, or higher calling (Zinnbauer, 1999). Spirituality, on the other hand, is a respect for the mysterious, and the acknowledgment of the possibility of the existence of a divine entity (Spilka, 1996).

Due to the rigid and the strictly structured recent definition of religion, this research aims to move beyond the confines of modern religion as a structure and include spirituality by alluding to the divine. As such, divine priming is used to plant the idea of the divine in the minds of participants. Priming is a common way of testing concepts and has been extensively linked with behavioral change (Macrae, 1998); (Dijksterhuis, 2008); (Sharriff, 2007); (Pichon, 2007). Priming is defined as a technique where presenting one stimulus will affect a certain response, in which the response usually belongs to a different domain (Bargh, 1996). Divine priming itself has been directly linked to behavioral change in varying contexts. In Dijksterhuis et al’s (2008) study, it has been found that priming divine concepts decreased feelings of authorship regarding events. Toburen (2010) found that priming people with the divine increased both anxiety and task persistence. Pichon (2007) and Sharriff (2007) primed people with God concepts and the divine and found out that the divinely primed participants exhibited higher levels of prosocial behavior in a co-operative context. The valence of this divine priming can also be either positive or negative.

had something to do with their religion and were aware of the priming. In implicit priming, used by Sharriff (2007) and Toburen (2010), a sentence unscrambling task was given for participants to complete. These sentences contained religious and divine related words. As such, the priming intention was hidden, and participants later showed very little awareness of being exposed to a divine prime (Rounding, 2012). Subliminal priming is done in such a way that participants aren’t even aware they were exposed to any stimuli. An example of this type consists of very quickly flashing religion or divine related words across a screen (Johnson, 2010; Saroglou, 2009). Finally, in order to transfer divine priming to a more natural setting and scenario, contextual priming was used. Subjects were primed either by hearing church bells or an Islamic prayer call in the distance while completing an experimental task (Aveyard, 2014). In Sharriff’s (2016) meta-analysis, he found that all four priming types were effective at inducing behavior change; however, results determining which type is the most effective remain inconclusive due to insufficient available evidence.

2.3

There are several studies linking divine priming with increased prosocial behavior, though none of the published research involve prosocial behavior in a monetary context. In an interesting study by Sharriff (2007), participants were primed with divine concepts and then went on to participate in an anonymous dictator game. Those who were primed with the divine exhibited more prosocial behavior, meaning they were more likely to be helpful and co-operative. In trying to understand a reason behind this phenomenon, the researchers hypothesize that priming concepts of the divine elicit responses similar to those of being watched, as if there was an eye in the sky observing their every move. Gervais and Norenzayan (2010) extend on this hypothesis and name it the “supernatural monitoring hypothesis”. Cues of being watched increase prosocial behavior (Keller, 2011), or socially desirable responding, which explains how the divinely primed respondents did indeed exhibit more positive prosocial behavior.

included money. The existing literature overwhelmingly points to the fact that divine priming does indeed positively influence prosocial behavior (Sharriff, 2016). While charitable contribution and donation intentions are indeed a prosocial behavior, they haven’t been directly studied in any existing and published research, although a myriad of other types of prosocial behavior have, none of which involve money. Since charitable donations are a form of prosocial behavior (Taute, 2004), a conclusion that divine priming will positively influence intentions to donate to charities by extension on grounds of prosocial behavior is possible. This assumption, however, seems risky due to the involvement of money, which has been shown to change interpersonal behavior and make people less giving and more selfish (Vohs, 2008). This selfishness brought on by money may counteract any prosocial instincts activated by divine priming.

In another study, Pichon (2007) also corroborated the theory that priming people with the divine elicits higher prosociality. In their study, participants were either primed with certain divine concepts, or were primed with an unrelated subject. Upon completion of the priming task, respondents were exposed to charity pamphlets while exiting the experiment room. Those who were divinely primed took a significantly larger number of charity pamphlets than those who weren’t primed. In a separate and unrelated study, it has been found that people who engage more with charities are more likely to donate and make a charitable contribution (Smith, 2007). Participants who take the charity pamphlets in Pichon’s (2007) study are actively engaging with these charities, and thus are more likely to make a charitable contribution. This reasoning is used to formulate the first hypothesis:

H1: People that are primed to think of the divine will exhibit higher donation intentions.

due to being more religious, however, spiritual people who aren’t necessarily religious will score significantly lower on the religiosity scale, even though they might also be greatly in tune with a divine truth, entity or object (LaPierre, 1994). Atheists, or people who do not believe in a higher power or any religion, will score the lowest on the religiosity scale, followed by agnostics, or those who aren’t sure of the existence of a higher power. Spiritual people will score higher than the agnostics on the scale, but still lower than people who are religious and tied to a certain defined religion.

While religiosity has been directly linked with more positive prosocial behavior (Batson, 1993), mixed results have been reported when linking religiosity with the prominence of divine priming (Toburen, 2010); (Randolph-Seng, 2007); (Sharriff, 2007); (Gervais, 2010). In many studies concerning divine priming’s effects on a particular situation, religiosity has been used as a moderator to assess whether the extent of one’s belief in God and religiousness has any consequence on the effectiveness of divine priming. Intuitively, one would imagine that more religious and spiritual people will be more influenced by divine priming, however this is not always the case as presented in documented research.

Toburen and Meier (2010) assessed the influence of divine priming on task persistence. They successfully revealed in their research that people primed with the divine were more persistent to finish a given task. As a moderator in their study, religiosity had no effect, and whether or not one was religious did not matter. This result shows that divine priming elicits similar effects on people regardless of their religiosity. In another study, participants were primed with the divine and then their likelihood of cheating was assessed (Randolph-Seng, 2007). While the main interaction in their study showed that divine priming led people to cheat less and behave more honestly, the moderator, religiosity, also showed no significant effect on the main interaction.

Conversely, in the studies by Sharriff (2007) and Gervais (2010), religiosity was a deciding factor in whether or not divine priming elicited higher prosocial behavior. In their studies, people that reported low religiosity were less likely to behave in a more prosocial manner, indicating that in fact religiosity does play an important role when moderating for the effects of divine priming. In fact, the non-religious people were not affected at all by the divine prime (Sharriff, 2007).

with the divine, people are subconsciously reminded of the aspects surrounding religion, and the cultural expectancies around religion and religion’s ties with higher prosociality. As a result, people act in a more prosocial way. Since everyone, regardless of religiosity, is aware of the commandments of religion and its prosocial encouragement, religiosity in this case does not affect whether divine priming will influence prosocial behavior. Alternatively, in the studies by Sharriff (2007) and Gervais (2010), divine priming activated a mechanism dubbed the ‘supernatural monitoring hypothesis’; where primed individuals felt like they were being watched. In turn, if individuals were of low religiosity, they are less likely to feel as if an eye in the sky is watching them, since they do not actively believe in the existence of the eye in the sky. This implies that religiosity will moderate the relationship, and divine priming should be more effective in those with higher religiosity scores.

In the meta-analysis by Sharriff (2016), religiosity’s effect was studied as a moderator to divine priming and prosocial behavior in a number of studies, and his findings supported that religiosity does actually affect this relationship, with higher levels of religiosity attributed to a stronger effect of divine priming on positive prosocial behavior. While there is still conflict regarding the effect of religiosity, the majority of evidence points towards a higher religiosity increasing the effect of divine priming on prosocial behavior (Sharriff, 2016). The second hypothesis is formulated as follows:

H2: ‘Religiosity’ positively moderates the effect of divine priming to donation intentions.

3. Methodology

3.1

invalidating the results, a total of 90 participants completed the entire survey and their responses will be assessed. 46 of these participants were primed with the divine, and 44 participants were among the control group.

3.2

Following the study by Sharriff (2007), divine priming is established as follows: Participants begin by completing a sentence unscrambling task, where the primed participants will observe sentences that allude to the divine in order to prime them with a divine concept. If the priming was set in a negative or threatening tone, research has shown that it causes significant negative physiological changes in individuals (Weisbuch-Remington, 2005). Due to this phenomenon, divine priming in this research will have a positive valence (Pichon, 2007). Since a negative valence in priming is attributed to physiological changes within people, a positive valence will be attributed to the sentences. These sentences are, scrambled/unscrambled, “meal divine this is”/“This meal is divine”, “are here God thank you”/“Thank God you are here”, “faith lost they never”/“They never lost faith”, “spirits eternal are our”/“Our spirits are eternal” and “looks she angel like an”/“She looks like an angel”. For the participants in the control, they are given neutral sentences which don’t directly allude to anything particular, yet also positively valenced. These sentences are: “great weather today the is”/“The weather is great today”, “meal tastes this amazing”/“This meal tastes amazing”, “for your you help thank”/“Thank you for your help”, “red dress was her beautiful”/“Her red dress was beautiful”, “”vegetables healthy green very are“/Green vegetables are very healthy”. Upon completing the priming task, all respondents are directed to a page with a charity’s plight. This entails a story about a young African child named Marcus who, due to circumstances outside his control, is starving. The plight is as follows:    

Figure  2  

provide food for his Aunt and his dying Uncle. However, food is scarce, and Marcus is unable to provide enough food to sustain himself and his sick Uncle. As a result, Marcus does not eat. If he remains in this situation, Marcus will starve and he will not be alive for much longer.

With your help ,Marcus will be able to eat. Children like Marcus will have access to food. Any amount to support Marcus and other children in similar situations will benefit the cause.”

In order to measure religiosity, factor analysis was used to reduce the three items included in the measurement of religiosity into a single item, facilitating subsequent measurements that involve this religiosity construct. Factor analysis was then performed on the 3 items, which were successfully reduced to one single factor with a one-factor eigenvalue of 2.544. This factor also explained a total of 84% of the variance within responses, with a scree plot clearly indicating a 1-factor solution as optimal. A Kaiser Meyer Olkin measure of sampling adequacy of 0.761, indicating good sampling adequacy (Fabrigar, 1999), was also shown. Bartlett’s test of sphericity resulted in a 0.000 significance indicating all correlations within the correlation matrix are significant. As such, subjective religiosity was then transformed into a single factor by averaging the results of each respondent over each of the original three questions. A scale reliability test measuring the Cronbach Alpha of the construct was used following the factor analysis. Testing for the religiosity construct resulted in an alpha of 0.909 across all 90 respondents which, according to George and Mallery (2003), indicates an excellent reliability with an alpha > 0.9.

3.3

A regression analysis is then performed to assess whether there is a significant direct relationship between divine priming and donation intention. Although the independent variable is nominal in nature, it is possible to use regression by including a dummy variable for the independent variable; with the dependent variable being continuous. Moreover, measuring the moderating effect of religiosity will also be using regression analysis. To do this, an interaction variable between the priming, and the religiosity, will be calculated by multiplying the two values of priming and religiosity and creating a new moderating variable. The effect of religiosity will also be regressed on donation intentions as well as the moderator. In addition, the control variable, namely age, income, gender, and religious background will also be included in the regression model in order to further validate the results and account for possible confounds. Mathematically, these regressions are represented as follows:

Donation intentions = Constant + (B1)*(Divine Priming) + (B2)*(Control Variable 1) + error.

For the moderator effect: Donation intentions = Constant + (B1)*(Divine Priming) +

Gender, income, and religious background are categorical variables, and are therefore coded using dummies in order to include them in the regression analysis. For gender, Male is used as the dummy with a ‘0’ value, and female is the tested category with a ‘1’ value. For income, which includes 4 different categories, each separate category was given a test coding value of ‘1’ with other categories given a value of ‘0’, resulting in 3 different regression variables with the constant representing the first category. Religious background was also given several categorical dummy variables, coded similar to income.

4. Results

Upon closer inspection of the data, there appeared to be a few obvious outliers. While most participants chose to donate 100 euros or less, there were in particular 8 participants who entered values above 500 euros. While their donation intentions cannot be completely ignored or dismissed, as they might indeed be willing to donate such high amounts, these values greatly increase the standard deviation and reduce the possibility of significance in the regression model. As such, these 8 values, and their respective responses on all other parts of the survey, were temporarily removed and a second regression with the remaining 82 responses was carried out in order to assess any significance in the conceptual model. Of these respondents, 42 respondents were primed with the divine, and 40 respondents were presented with the control. However, initially, a regression analysis including the outliers was carried out in order to assess the quality of the model and any possible significance.

This analysis was completed using the responses gathered from all the 90 participants. This regression included the main independent variable, divine priming, as well as the control variables, age, gender, and income, all regressed on the dependent variable, which is donation intentions. The adjusted R square of this regression model is 0.024, which signifies a 2.4% fit of the data points on the regression line. The regression model itself had no significance with a p = 0.537. Additionally, none of the predictor variables were significant either, as expected, due to the high standard deviation values caused by the outliers.

using 82 respondents which exclude the outliers. Of the control variables, only income yielded any significance at the p < 0.10 level. As such, in subsequent regressions, only income is included as a control variable. Moreover, only the first category in income was significantly different from the other categories, specifically, those earning less than 10,000 euros donated significantly less than the other categories. Differences between the other categories, however, were not significant. As such, income, with the first category ( < 10,000 euros) coded as a test variable with a ‘1’ value, is added to the regression analyses that follow.

The next regression, excluding the 8 outliers, yielded much more favorable results compared to the first regression including outliers. The dependent variable donation intentions was regressed on the independent variable divine priming, and one control variable, income. This time, the adjusted R square was 0.181, indicating an 18.1% fit between the regression line and the data. The significance of the model was 0.000, indicating significance. Results of this analysis can be seen in Table 1 below.

    Model   Unstandardized   B   Standardized   Beta   Standard   Deviation   Significance  

Divine  Priming  Main  Effect*   24.203   0.253   9.669   0.014*   Income**   -­‐35.204   -­‐0.368   9.669   0.000**  

*  =  significant  at  the  p  <  0.05  level   **  =  significant  at  the  p  <  0.01  level  

Table 1  

people with an income greater than 10,000 euros. Additionally, the Vif score for both predictor variables in the model is 1.00, indicating low variance inflation and a low possible multicollinearity between the variables (O’Brien, 2007).

With the main effect showing significance after removing the outliers, the second hypothesis is put to the test, assessing whether religiosity has a moderating effect on the relationship between divine priming and donation intentions. A third regression analysis is performed including the control variable income with the moderator’s direct effect and the moderating interaction effect. Results of this regression can be seen below in Table 2. This regression model yielded a significance of 0.000, with an adjusted R square of 0.191, indicating a 19.1% fit between the data points and the regression line.

Model   Unstandardized  

B   Standardized  Betas   Deviation  Standard   Significance   VIF  Score  

Divine  Priming  Main  

Effect*   40.848   0.427   20.811   0.053*   4.688   Income***   -­‐34.023   -­‐0.356   9.863   0.001***   1.053   Religiosity  (Direct  effect)   8.762   0.250   5.234   0.098*   2.198   Religiosity  x  divine  prime  

(Moderating  effect)   -­‐7.026   -­‐0.247   7.185   0.331   6.330   *  =  significant  at  the  p  <  0.1  level  

***  =  significant  at  the  p  <  0.01  level  

Table 2    

the Vif scores indicating high variance inflation for both the main divine priming effect, with a score of 4.688, and a high value for the moderating effect as well, with a Vif score of 6.330. According to most research, Vif scores greater than 10 indicate problems of multicollinearity (Hair, 1995); (Kennedy, 1992); (Neter, 1989), however research also indicates that Vif factors greater than 4 may also pose a problem particularly in weak models or models with a relatively small sample size (Pan, 2008). These variance inflation scores are indeed greater than 4, and as such, the presence of multicollinearity undermines the significance and inflates the coefficients and standard deviations of these variables.

In lieu of these correlations, the moderating effect was assessed alone, and so was the direct effect of religiosity on donation intentions. These are without the influence of the main variable divine priming on the regression. The moderating effect was indeed significant with p = 0.01. Religiosity’s direct effect on donation intentions was also shown to be significant, at p = 0.047. When including both religiosity and the interaction effect in the same model, religiosity loses its significance, whereas the interaction moderating effect remains significant at the p < 0.1 level, with a p = 0.071. While there was indeed significance in these separate models, they cannot be interpreted from a statistical point of view. In order to correctly measure an interaction effect, both direct effects included in the interaction effect should be present in the regression model except under very rare circumstances not met in this research (Brambor, 2006). This implies that due to possible multicollinearity in the full model, religiosity’s moderating effect cannot be appropriately analyzed and thus results in this research involving this moderating effect of religiosity remains inconclusive.

5. Discussion

primed with divine concepts, they intended to donate more, on average, than participants that weren’t primed. This extends on all previous research regarding the effects of divine priming on prosocial behavior, and adds a monetary aspect to the aggregate prosocial umbrella. It seems that though money tends to make people act selfishly (Vohs, 2008), this effect doesn’t seem to undermine the strength of a divine prime on participant’s willingness to donate money. Since divine priming occurred before the introduction of the charity’s plight, the selfish heuristics activated by the introduction of money might have undermined the prosocial influence of the divine prime itself, which did not happen in this experiment.

While religiosity did not significantly moderate the relationship between divine priming and donation intentions, there was a slightly significant effect pertaining to religiosity’s direct effect on divine priming. With the high correlations and variance inflation factors in the model, the effects of religiosity as a moderator cannot be adequately interpreted. Religiosity itself had a lower variance inflation and was significant, hence showing that religiosity has a weak direct effect on donation intentions. This implies that individuals with higher religiosity scores are more likely to donate larger sums than their counterparts. This is in line with some previous research tying religiosity to prosociality directly (Batson, 1993), however the second hypothesis in this study indicating a moderating effect for religiosity on divine priming and donation intentions cannot be supported or rejected in light of the regression analysis results. What this research does indicate, however, is that divine priming is effective in soliciting higher donations regardless of one’s religiosity, given that the main effect of divine priming on donation intentions remains significant in all instances.

Interestingly, income’s effect is also significant in all instances, where people who earned less than 10,000 per month donated less, on average, than people who earned more than 10,000 euros. This can be explained by the fact that the experiment was spread via Facebook, Twitter and online student forums, and 39 of the 82 participants in this experiment earn less than 10,000 euros per year, of which most are likely students. While students tend to earn little money, they may not be able to afford to donate much to charities, which is why income in this study tends to have an opposite effect on charitable contribution when compared to existing research (Piff, 2010). Further research focusing on comparing students with the working population in terms of charitable contribution can shed more light on this phenomenon.

While religious background, or the religion one is born with, did not relay any significance in the regression analysis, a one way ANOVA test was carried out to expose any differences in donation intentions between members of different religions. The only significantly different religion was the Druze religion, donating more, on average, than all other religious backgrounds. This religion is a relatively unknown minority with only a few million practicing it, spread around the mountains of Lebanon and Syria. Most participants were Christian [35 out of 82], 25 out of 82 were Druze, 17 were Atheist, 1 was Buddhist, 1 was Jewish, and 5 were Muslims. Given these numbers, it is not adequate to draw any concrete conclusions from this analysis, because 40 respondents per category is required to reach statistical relevance. However, given the minority religion Druze scored higher, it would be interesting if further research delved into how different religious backgrounds may react to divine primes in a prosocial context.

required to extend this study beyond its current confines, mainly by including a larger number of participants from varying ages and walks of life.

Donation intentions were measured in this study, however, those are merely intentions, and while they do somewhat reflect actual donations (Smith, 2007), they are not concrete donations, and do not involve real money. Participants are aware that they were not actively going to donate, and therefore were not going to use any of their money. While this does not remove from the validity of the study, since priming money resulted in selfish behavior and real money is not necessarily included to prime such concepts (Vohs, 2008). Moreover, studies show that while donation intentions tend to be inflated, they still are an accurate predictor of actual donations (Smith, 2007). However, it would still be more accurate to measure actual donations rather than donation intentions, which could be an area for further research.

Interesting psychological questions can be posed in light of this study, given the results. What were the psychological mechanisms activated with the priming? While earlier in this paper two mechanisms have been discussed, it is interesting to note which of these, if any, were activated. Due to religiosity not being critical in determining whether divine priming actually causes donation intentions, this research leans more on the theory that priming divine concepts activates prosocial heuristics associated with religions (Saroglou, 2004). Moreover, this paper sheds light on the fact that divine priming is not completely counteracted by a monetary prime, and still elicits a prosocial response in a monetary context. A unifying psychological explanation of the mechanisms involved would be a very interesting and novel area for future research.

References

Andreoni, James, and A. Abigail Payne. "Charitable giving." Handbook of

public economics 5 (2013): 1-50.

Aveyard, Mark E. "A call to honesty: Extending religious priming of moral behavior to Middle Eastern Muslims." PloS one 9.7 (2014): e99447. Batson, C. Daniel, et al. "Religious prosocial motivation: Is it altruistic or egoistic?." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57.5 (1989): 873. Bargh, John A., Mark Chen, and Lara Burrows. "Automaticity of social

behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action."

Journal of personality and social psychology 71.2 (1996): 230.

Batson, Charles Daniel, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis. Religion

and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. Oxford University

Press, 1993.

Bolton, Gary E., and Elena Katok. "An experimental test for gender differences in beneficent behavior." Economics Letters 48.3 (1995): 287-292.

Brambor, Thomas, William Roberts Clark, and Matt Golder. "Understanding interaction models: Improving empirical analyses." Political analysis 14.1 (2006): 63-82.

De Dreu, Carsten KW, Vincent Y. Yzerbyt, and Jaques-Philippe Leyens. "Dilution of stereotype-based cooperation in mixed-motive interdependence."

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 31.6 (1995): 575-593.

Dijksterhuis, Ap, et al. "Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events." Journal of experimental social psychology 44.1 (2008): 2-9.

Einolf, Christopher J. "Gender differences in the correlates of volunteering and charitable giving." Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 40.6 (2011): 1092-1112.

Eisenberg, Nancy, and Paul A. Miller. "The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors." Psychological bulletin 101.1 (1987): 91.

George, Darren, and M. Mallery. "Using SPSS for Windows step by step: a simple guide and reference." Boston, MA: Allyn y Bacon.[Links] (2003). Gervais, Will M. "Perceiving Minds and Gods How Mind Perception Enables, Constrains, and Is Triggered by Belief in Gods." Perspectives on Psychological

Science 8.4 (2013): 380-394.

Ginges, Jeremy, Ian Hansen, and Ara Norenzayan. "Religion and support for suicide attacks." Psychological science 20.2 (2009): 224-230.

Hair, J. F. Jr., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L. & Black, W. C. (1995). Multivariate Data Analysis (3rd ed). New York: Macmillan

Hill, Peter C., et al. "Conceptualizing religion and spirituality: Points of

commonality, points of departure." Journal for the theory of social behaviour 30.1 (2000): 51-77.

Inzlicht, Michael, and Alexa M. Tullett. "Reflecting on god religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors." Psychological Science 21.8 (2010): 1184-1190.

Jaccard, James, and Robert Turrisi. Interaction effects in multiple regression. No. 72. Sage, 2003.

Johnson, Megan K., Wade C. Rowatt, and Jordan LaBouff. "Priming Christian religious concepts increases racial prejudice." Social Psychological and

Personality Science 1.2 (2010): 119-126.

Keller, Johannes, and Stefan Pfattheicher. "Vigilant self-­‐regulation, cues of being watched and cooperativeness." European Journal of Personality 25.5 (2011): 363-372.

Kennedy, P. (1992). A Guide to Econometrics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Krause, Neal. "Measuring religiosity in later life." Research on aging 15.2 (1993): 170-197.

Lapierre, Lawrence L. "A model for describing spirituality." Journal of religion

and health 33.2 (1994): 153-161.

Lichtenstein, Donald R., Minette E. Drumwright, and Bridgette M. Braig. "The effect of corporate social responsibility on customer donations to corporate-supported nonprofits." Journal of marketing 68.4 (2004): 16-32.

McClelland, Robert, and Arthur C. Brooks. "What is the real relationship between income and charitable giving?." Public Finance Review 32.5 (2004): 483-497.

Neter, J., Wasserman, W. & Kutner, M. H. (1989). Applied Linear Regression Models. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

O’brien, Robert M. "A caution regarding rules of thumb for variance inflation factors." Quality & Quantity 41.5 (2007): 673-690.

Pan, Y, & Jackson, R. T. (2008). “Ethnic difference in the relationship between acute inflammation and and serum ferritin in US adult males.” Epidemiology

and Infection, 136, 421-431.

Peterson, Michael, et al. "Reason and religious belief: an introduction to the philosophy of religion." (2008).

Pichon, Isabelle, Giulio Boccato, and Vassilis Saroglou. "Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: A priming study." European Journal of

Social Psychology 37.5 (2007): 1032-1045.

Piff, Paul K., et al. "Having less, giving more: the influence of social class on prosocial behavior." Journal of personality and social psychology 99.5 (2010): 771.

Rounding, Kevin, et al. "Religion replenishes self-control." Psychological

Science 23.6 (2012): 635-642.

Saroglou, Vassilis, Vanessa Delpierre, and Rebecca Dernelle. "Values and religiosity: A meta-analysis of studies using Schwartz’s model." Personality

and individual differences 37.4 (2004): 721-734.

Saroglou, Vassilis, Olivier Corneille, and Patty Van Cappellen. "“Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”: Religious priming activates submissive thoughts and behaviors." The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 19.3 (2009): 143-154.

Schumann, Karina, et al. "Religious magnanimity: reminding people of their religious belief system reduces hostility after threat." Journal of personality and

social psychology 107.3 (2014): 432.

Shariff, Azim F., and Ara Norenzayan. "God is watching you priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game."

Psychological science 18.9 (2007): 803-809.

Sinha, Rajiv K., and Naomi Mandel. "Preventing digital music piracy: the carrot or the stick?." Journal of Marketing 72.1 (2008): 1-15.

Smith, Joanne R., and Andreè McSweeney. "Charitable giving: The

effectiveness of a revised theory of planned behaviour model in predicting donating intentions and behaviour." Journal of Community & Applied Social

Psychology 17.5 (2007): 363-386.

Skinner, B. F. (1969). Contingencies of reinforcement: A theoretical analysis.

New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts

Sosis, Richard, and Bradley J. Ruffle. "Ideology, religion, and the evolution of cooperation: Field experiments on Israeli Kibbutzim." Research in Economic

Anthropology 23.89 (2004): 117.

Spilka, Bernard, and Daniel N. McIntosh. "Religion and spirituality: The known and the unknown." KI Pargament (Chair), What is the difference between

religion and spirituality (1996).

Taute, Harry, and Shaun McQuitty. "Feeling good! Doing good! An exploratory look at the impulsive purchase of the social good." Journal of Marketing

Theory and Practice 12.2 (2004): 16-27.

Toburen, Tina, and Brian P. Meier. "Priming God-related concepts increases anxiety and task persistence." Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 29.2 (2010): 127.

Uecker, Jeremy E., Mark D. Regnerus, and Margaret L. Vaaler. "Losing my religion: The social sources of religious decline in early adulthood." Social

Forces 85.4 (2007): 1667-1692.

Vohs, Kathleen D., Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode. "The psychological consequences of money." science 314.5802 (2006): 1154-1156.

Vohs, Kathleen D., Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode. "Merely activating the concept of money changes personal and interpersonal behavior." Current

Directions in Psychological Science 17.3 (2008): 208-212.

Weisbuch-Remington, Max, et al. "The nonconscious influence of religious symbols in motivated performance situations." Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin 31.9 (2005): 1203-1216.

Zinnbauer, Brian J., Kenneth I. Pargament, and Allie B. Scott. "The emerging meanings of religiousness and spirituality: Problems and prospects." Journal of

personality 67.6 (1999): 889-919.