Religious and Conservative Charitable Giving Reflects Ingroup Preferences

Abstract

In order to determine whether religiosity and conservatism are associated with generalized versus particularistic charitable giving, we offered participants a hypothetical array of charities across several domains. The charitable organizations represented the domains of anti-poverty, medical assistance, and disaster relief. Each participant was asked to distribute a a hypothetical fifty dollar sum among four different charities in each domain. These four separate charities represented Christian versus secular, and local versus international assistance. Regression analyses indicated that religious participants allocate more funds to religious charities. Conservatives show the same preference even controlling for religiosity. This indicates that large portions of charitable giving are based on religious and political ingroup preferences and on shared ideologies