Shariff Azim (and/or his friends) rocks!

After blathering ad nauseum (and judging by the overwhelming number of comments on my postings from the conference) about the goings on at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Philadelphia, I got the sneaking suspicion that I should have been a bit more self-promoting (Advice Goddess Amy Alkon had the good sense to put up little signs at the conference sign-up table indicating she'd been blogging on the proceedings).

But Shariff Azim and/or his friends and fans, saved the day with multiple visits, although I think I gave his research short shrift. So here's how Azim and his second author, Ara Norenzayan, laid out the meat of their study in an abstract:

"Using social psychological methodologies, we have examined how priming religious concepts affects moral and prosocial behavior. Our results indicate that even subtle unconscious exposure to religious ideas can dramatically encourage prosocial over selfish behavior. These effects hold for both theists and atheists. Current research is examining the relative effectiveness of secular moral concepts such as civil responsibility and social contractarianism."

I still say the most interesting piece of their research - to me, an outsider - is how stark the difference was between religion-primed and control-primed participants, and the implications for priming in other venues. Indeed, "can dramatically encourage..." may even be too soft a sell...