Publication details
Religious costly signal induces more trustworthiness than secular costly signal: A study of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| Citation | |
| Description | Previous research suggested that costly displays of commitment to group norms increase trust (Hall et al., 2015) and facilitate cooperation (Sosis & Ruffle, 2003). Such costly displays are characteristic for expressions of religious beliefs, which is tied to religious normative systems. Here, on a sample of more than 1800 participants distributed across five studies, we investigated whether costly behaviors are more effective in promoting trust when integrated within a religious rather than secular context using the Christian pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela as a costly display of commitment. In two ethnographical investigations (Studies 1A-1B), we show that pilgrims base their pilgrim identity upon the physical effort and overall costliness of the pilgrimage. Next, in three pre- registered experiments with secular and Christian Spaniards, we compared the trustworthiness of Facebook posts relaying participation in the pilgrimage in secular or religious contexts with various control posts. Results showed that the pilgrimage increases trustworthiness as compared with subtle commitment signals and baseline conditions regardless of the secular or religious context (Study 2). However, comparing religious pilgrimage with a secular hike of the same difficulty revealed a greater increase in trustworthiness (as compared to control posts) only in the religious pilgrimage condition (Study 3). The final study showed that the effect of religious pilgrimage extends beyond simply conveying adherence to prosocial norms since this effect was not observed for a pro- environmental hike of similar difficulty as the pilgrimage (Study 4). Overall, these results suggest that costly displays of commitment to religious norms are more effective in promoting trustworthiness than secular displays of the same difficulty. |