On Religious Prosociality, Fairness, and Beauty

Previous theoretical and empirical studies of the effects of religion on adherents' prosociality have focused, almost entirely on the intragroup and intergroup aspects of religion, as facilitators of prosocial attitudes and behaviors. The moral values preached by various religions were treated inseparably, as part of a whole of religious practices, which contribute to the evolution of cohesive, more adapted, large groups. The present research takes another direction by addresses the question pertaining to the intrinsic effects of religious moral principle on its adherents' economic behavior. For symmetric and asymmetric economic interactions between two rational individuals who nonetheless follow the moral maxim "treat others as you treat yourself", we solved for the divisions of profit which guarantee equal levels of satisfaction of the interacting parties As expected, for the symmetric case, modeled as a symmetric two-person resource dilemma (CPR) game, we find that adherence to the discussed moral principle prescribes an equal division of the shared resource. For the asymmetric game, modelled as a dictator game, the solution depends on the assumption made about how outcome satisfaction is measured. Under the conventional definition of level of satisfaction as the difference between actual and aspired outcomes, the model prescribes a division of ( , for the allocator and recipient, respectively. Strikingly, under a new definition which compares the actual and aspired outcomes on a ratio scale, rather than a difference scale, the model prescribes a division (Φ, 1Φ), or ≈ (0.62, 0.38), for the allocator and recipient, respectively, where Φ is the famous Golden Ratio. We discuss the obtained solutions, suggest experimental tests of their predictions and comment about possible connection between human's perception of fairness and their aesthetic tastes.