| Because of the benevolence values it teaches, religion has long been believed to provide people with motivation for prosocial behavior. However, research support of this connection has been limited---even for the religious having an investment in maintaining religious beliefs and values (e.g., intrinsic religiosity). Also, reasons other than religious values have been suggested as to why the religious may behave prosocially (e.g., egoism). Thus, in 2 different studies, the prosocial motivation a person receives from both his or her investment in religion and personal values was measured. Prosocial motivation was measured by the helpful feedback given about his or her experience as a participant. It was expected that participants who believed with an intrinsic religiosity (e.g., high scores on the Intrinsic/Extrinsic-Revised scale [I/E-R; Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989]) would show to have a stronger prosocial motivation. It was also expected that benevolence values prioritized as self-central, and activated would motivate prosocial behavior (e.g., Verplanken & Holland, 2002). Value self-centrality was measured with a modified Schwartz Value Survey (SVS-57; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995).;A different implicit priming procedure was used in each of the studies to activate prosocial motivation from benevolence values. In Study 1, self-central benevolence values primed directly with scrambled sentence tests (Costin, 1969; Srull & Wyer, 1979) did not influence prosocial behavior. However, priming self-activation (Brewer & Gardner, 1996) in Study 2 showed self-central benevolence values to be activated, and motivate participants for prosocial behavior (when not limited from doing so by an opposing motivation from other prioritized values---such as self-central achievement values). Self-activation also showed to activate prosocial motivation in individuals with an intrinsic religiosity (but not individuals having other forms of personal religiosity). Thus, the present studies further suggest that religion helps create a capacity for prosocial behavior in the intrinsically religious greater than that of others less invested in religious principles and values (which may include those showing high degrees of personal religiosity in other ways). Also, as there was further evidence that the intrinsically religious prioritize benevolence values as self-central, this further suggests their benevolence values as being a source of prosocial motivation. However, a key to this will be whether religious individuals living in cultures where self-enhancement is emphasized (such as in modernized and affluent cultures like the U.S.) can limit their development of additional values that might impede prosociality (e.g., achievement values). |
