Connor Fischer
Jeffrey Stevens
Psych 270
QALMRI Mini-Project
November 12, 2015

What are the Evolutionary Benefits of Religion?

Question

Religion has been a large part of societies since the beginning of communication in mankind. Whether it Christianity, Buddhism, or Judaism, different religions can be found all over the world. One thing that many of these religions have in common is their belief of some sort of life after this one we are currently living. Not only do the majority of these religions believe in the afterlife, they usually believe we suffer or are honored in the next life based on our actions in our current life. But how can the majority of the world believe in afterlife without physical proof? There must be other benefits …show more content…
The dependent variable in the first hypothesis is the amount of resources a person gets from the members of their religion. Religious groups can supply many resources and services for their congregation or followers. These resources can differ from reduced private education, to free meals after a religious gathering, or even helpful tips and advice. The dependent variable for the second hypothesis is just the number of crimes that are committed. You can predict that not all crimes will end just because of religious practices. You can also make an accurate prediction that even some extremely religious people can break the law sometimes. The main independent variable for this experiment is the amount of time spent practicing and attending religious functions; this independent variable can be used for both of the hypotheses. For the first hypothesis, it can be anticipated that there will be a positive correlation between the amount of time spent on religious things and the amount of resources received. This positive correlation can be interpreted as; the more time spent on religion, the more resources they will receive. It can also occur the other way, meaning, the less amount of time spent in religious practices will decrease the amount of resources as well. The other hypothesis can be predicted to have negative correlation between the independent and dependent …show more content…
The religions that will be used in this experiment are: Christianity, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu. Each religion will have 40 participants. There will be 20 men and 20 women. Both sexes will differ in ages from 18 to 65 years old. They will be assigned an amount of time they will spend per week in religious practices. All of the subjects will be randomly and equally placed in either 0, 1, 4, or 8 hours of religious practice per week. The subjects will carry out the experiment for 28 days. On the last day of the experiment each subject will be asked to play the dictator game with 5 randomly selected people from the same religious group. The person who is not taking part in the study will play the role of the dictator. The dictator will be given $10 and he or she will decide how much of the money they can choose to give or not give to the test subject. The amount of money received in the dictator game will act as the dependent variable in this experiment. After the dictator game is over the subjects will be asked how much money they did or did not receive from each dictator game played. This data will then be