Buddhism, identity, and class: fairness and favoritism in the Tyva Republic

Current research suggests that commitment to moralistic, omniscient, and punitive gods may contribute to the evolution of cooperation. As they may curb antisocial behaviors that incur costly social repercussions, supernatural punishment may help stabilize reciprocal relationships among peers. One recent elaboration of this hypothesis posits that commitment to such gods may boost prosociality to the point that it expands cooperation beyond one's family and local community. Using three permutations of an experimental game designed to measure impartial fairness, the present study tests this hypothesis among Buddhists from the Tyva Republic. Contrary to the expanded sociality hypothesis, we found that key features of local spirits and Buddha systematically predict favoritism toward co-religionists from one's community rather than fairness toward co-religionists from distant towns. Moreover, important indicators of class - years of formal education, material insecurity, and fluency in the Tyvan language - also predict favoritism toward local Buddhists rather than geographically distant Buddhists. We used a Buddhist protection charm as a prime condition that showed no simple effects across games, but did interact with key religious variables. Importantly, when players had a stake in the game and played against anonymous, geographically distant Buddhists, if the experiment reminded them of the Buddhist temple or charity, they were fairer toward the distant co-religionist.