The prosocial effects of explicit and implicit reward-related religious primes

There is a growing body of empirical literature exploring how the priming of religious concepts influences prosociality. While many studies have used broad sets of religious primes covering a wide range of religious concepts, many recent studies have demonstrated that specific categories of religious primes (e.g., forgiveness- and punishment-related) differentially influence prosociality. However, only one study (Harrell, 2012) has explored the prosocial effects of reward-related religious primes. I conducted three priming studies to further test Harrell’s hypothesis that reward-related religious primes can positively influence prosociality (i.e., the supernatural reward hypothesis or SRH; see Saleam & Moustafa, 2016). Studies 1 and 2 explored the effects of generic and culturally-sensitive explicit reward-related religious primes, respectively, on the generosity of religious participants in the Dictator Game. Study 3 explored the effects of implicit reward-related religious primes on the generosity of religious participants in a charitable giving task. Neither explicit priming study yielded data supportive of the SRH; however, participants exposed to reward-related religious primes in Study 3, who expressed awareness of the reward-relevance of the primes, did exhibit greater generosity than participants who interpreted those same primes as being relevant to divine mercifulness. These participants also gave more generously than participants exposed to reward-related secular primes, neutral religious primes, or control primes. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the need to distinguish between concepts of divine reward and divine forgiveness/mercifulness when testing the SRH. However, given the results across these three studies, it is unclear whether reward-related religious concepts do effectively promote prosociality

The Other Radicalism: an Inquiry into Contemporary Australian Extreme Right Ideology, Politics and Organisation 1975-1995.

This Thesis examines the ideology, politics and organization of the Australian Extreme Right 1975-1995. Its central interpretative theme is the response of the Extreme Right to the development of the Australian State from a conservative Imperial structure into an American "anti-communist" client state, and ultimately into a liberal-internationalist machine which integrated Australia into a globalized capitalist order. The Extreme Right after 1975 differed from the various paramilitaries of the 1930's and the conservative anti-communist auxiliary organizations of the 1945-75 period. Post 1975, it lost its preoccupation with fighting the Left, and progressively grew as a challenger to liberal-internationalism. The abandonment of "White Australia" and consequent non-European immigration were the formative catalysts of a more diverse and complex Extreme Right. The Thesis uses a working definition of generic fascism as "palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism", to measure the degree of ideological and political radicalization achieved by the Extreme Right. This family of political ideas, independent of the State and mobilized beyond the limits of the former-period auxiliary conservatives, expressed itself in an array of organizational forms. The complexity of the Extreme Right can be demonstrated by using four typologies: Radical Nationalism, Neo-Nazism, Populist-Monarchism and Radical-Populism, each with specific points to make about social clienteles, geographical distribution, particular ideological heritages, and varied strategies and tactics. The Extreme Right could mobilize from different points of opportunity if political space became available. Inevitably a mutual delegitimization process between State and Extreme Right led to public inquiries and the emplacement of agencies and legislation to restrict the new radicalism. This was understandable since some Extreme Right groups employed violence or appeared to perform actions preparatory thereto. It also led to show-trials and para-State crime targeted against particular groups especially in the period 1988-91. Thereafter, Extreme Right organizations pursued strategies which led to electoral breakthroughs, both rural and urban as a style of Right-wing populist politics unfolded in the 1990's. It was in this period that the Extreme Right encouraged the co-optation by the State of the residual Left in the anti-racist fight. This seemed natural, as the Extreme Right's vocal references to popular democracy, national independence and the nativist heritage, had permitted it to occupy the Old Left's traditional ground. In that way too, it was "The Other Radicalism"

The influence of divine rewards and punishments on religious prosociality

A common finding across many cultures has been that religious people behave more prosocially than less (or non-) religious people. Numerous priming studies have demonstrated that the activation of religious concepts via implicit and explicit cues (e.g., ‘God’, ‘salvation’, among many others) increases prosociality in religious people. However, the factors underlying such findings are less clear. In this review we discuss hypotheses (e.g., the supernatural punishment hypothesis) that explain the religion-prosociality link, and also how recent findings in the empirical literature converge to suggest that the divine rewards (e.g., heaven) and punishments (e.g., hell) promised by various religious traditions may play a significant role. In addition, we further discuss inconsistencies in the religion-prosociality literature, as well as existing and future psychological studies which could improve our understanding of whether, and how, concepts of divine rewards and punishments may influence prosociality