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...psychology literature by observed behavior in Minimal Group experiments.2 Caring about one's group is also consistent with behavior in strategic bargaining, prisoner's dilemma and public goods experiments.3 Our experiment is designed to identify whether a subject's preferences over redistribution are affected by the payoffs of hern of payoffs between two other randomly chosen subjects. The vided about these subjects is their group affiliation. Despite the t, individuals systematically favor their ingroup member. experiments see, e.g., Brewer and Kramer (1986), Orbell et al. rossman (2005) and Ruffle and Sosis (2006). For other strategic et al. (2006), Charness et al. (2007), Chen and Li (2008), Fowler d Goette et al. (2006). 270 E.F. Klor, M. Shayo / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 269–278ingroup members. In the main treatment, subjects are divided into two weak natural groups based on their field of studies. They are randomly assigned gross incomes, and are informed of their own income, the overall mean income and themean income of each group. Subjects then vote anonymously over a redistributive scheme consisting of a linear tax and a lump sum transfer. Taxes do not introduce distortions; that is,...

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...gious affiliation leads to outgroup discrimination towards those outside one’s own faith group. Overall, religious group effects seem somewhat more robust in having been found in a number of studies (=-=Ruffle and Sosis, 2006-=-; Tan and Vogel, 2008; Chuah et al., 2011). From the experimental economics perspective, the available evidence leads to the opposite conclusion to McCleary and Barro (2006, p. 68), who, at the macro-...

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... to cooperate in multipilot cockpit settings. Work in other settings suggests that social distance plays a large role—as social distance decreases trustworthy behavior rises—see La Porta et al. 1997; =-=Ruffle and Sosis 2006-=-; Bernhard, Fischbacher, and Fehr 2006; Goette, Huffman, and Meier 2006. 79 Simon 1985. 80 Jervis 1978; Rubinstein 1982; Fearon 1995. 81 E.g., random players with k-levels of 0. 82 We are extremely gr...

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..., 2002), likable (Bailey & Young, 1986), intelligent, and trustworthy (Bailey & Doriot, 1985). In contrast, the social attribute ‘atheist’ is associated with prejudice and negative evaluations – and particularly so amongst religious people (Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011). Such stereotypes of religious individuals may also have some truth, for there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that religious people actually are more altruistic (e.g. Brooks, 2006). On the other hand, other work suggests that religious people are only selectively prosocial towards other religious people (e.g. Ruffle & Sosis, 2006), or even that they are not more prosocial at all (e.g. Anderson, Mellor, & Milyo, 2010). Thus the question of religious prosociality remains open. Are religious people more prosocial in general, or do they exhibit a bounded prosociality that includes only other religious people? In this study, we address this question by investigating how religious people behave towards one of the most extreme out-groups in American society: atheists. Effects of Religiosity on Prosocial Behavior Research has yielded mixed effects of participant religiosity on prosocial behavior (for a critical review, see Gal...

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...sciences (Rehman 2004). For centuries, madrassa played a central role in serving society and state (Talbani 1996). For society, it has been instrumental in preserving, sustaining and transmitting Islamic tradition over the generations. The tradition of Islamic learning has been core in reproducing Islamic culture, ideological goals and social control (Noor, Sikand and Bruinessen 2008). Various other studies has also shown a positive association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour of individuals in society (Ahmad 2009; Tan and Vogal 2008; Johansson-Stenman, Mahmud, and Martinsson 2008; Ruffle and Sosis 2006; Randolph-Seng and Nielson 2007). The Muslim states had also been relying on madrassas in acquiring human resource to run government machinery, and to seek political legitimization (Talibani 1996). Since, educational sites across the world has been centrally involved in propagation, selective dissemination, and social appropriation of the discourse (Ball 1990); therefore, the ruling elite in Muslim countries have been actively engaged with official functions within madrassas, like appointments of teachers, recruitment of students, and orientation of curriculum (Nashabi 1980). Financial patron...

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... (e.g., Goodall, 1990). Some believe that inter-group (as well as intra-group) competition was the greatest selection pressure in recent human evolution (e.g., Alexander, 1979). Examples of inter-group competition and conflict are easy to identify in our modern world, from warfare to gang violence to professional sports (for a review of evolutionary accounts of inter-group conflict, see van der Dennen, 2002). Within-group cooperation serves to facilitate inter-group competition (Bowles, 2006). Indeed, in-group-out-group bias has been extensively documented and analyzed by the social sciences (Ruffle and Sosis, 2006). For example, among New Guinea natives in egalitarian tribes, individuals playing economic games would take a higher cost to punish defectors from other tribes than defectors from their own tribe (Bernhard, Fischbacher, and Fehr, 2006). Modern Israeli kibbutz members were more cooperative toward anonymous kibbutz members than they were toward anonymous city residents (Ruffle and Sosis, 2006). Out-group members may be seen to pose a physical threat not only to oneself, but also to Evolutionary Psychology – ISSN 1474-7049 – Volume 5(3). 2007. -556- Evolutionary domains of risk-taking one’s kin ...

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...rty and social exclusion. Some studies in the growing literature use natural pre-existing identities, such as ethnicity (e.g., Fershtman and Gneezy, 2001) or the type of community in which one lives (=-=Ruffle and Sosis, 2006-=-). Other studies induce group identities in the laboratory and investigate their impact on prices and earnings in markets (Ball et al., 2001), cooperation (Eckel and Grossman, 2005; Charness et al., 2...