Effect of Religious Day on Prosocial Behavior: A Field Study.

It has previously been suggested that prosociality is correlated with the degree of religiousness. However, experimental and meta-analytical studies cast doubt on the existence of such a relationship. Due to the controversy over the link between religiousness and prosocial behavior, and the existence of only a small number of ecological experiments focusing on this relationship, we tested the effect of a religious salient day, a previously uninvestigated effect, on prosocial behavior. Specifically, across two experiments (N= 405) and in an ecological setting in Portugal, we tested whether prosocial behavior would increase on a religious salient day compared to a non-religious regular day. We found a gender-related effect: Women, on a religious day, were more inclined to agree to a prosocial behavior than on a non-religious day, whereas men did not change their behavior. We discuss such a difference in behavior, as well as the implications of our studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]