According to Robert Putnam in ‘Bowling Alone’, “Faith communities in which people worship together are arguably the single most important repository of social capital.” As reciprocity is a component of social capital, we can now say that faith does, indeed, lead to reciprocity. But this seems to close the conversation rather than continue the discussion. Let’s pursue reciprocity, specifically.
Reciprocity is a mutual exchange between at least two participants in which each party receives an immediate or future benefit. Putnam states on the value of religion in developing reciprocity:
- “Churches provide an important incubator for civic skills, civic norms, community interests, and civic engagement.”
- “… membership in religious groups [is] most closely associated with other forms of civic involvement, like voting, jury service, community projects, talking with neighbors, and giving to charity.”
- “Religiosity rivals education as a powerful correlate of most forms of civic engagement.”
- “… religious people are unusually active social capitalists.”
- “Religious involvement is an especially strong predictor of volunteering and philanthropy.”
What’s the obvious bridge to reciprocity? Trust. A society with a widespread degree of generalized social trust can create large economic organizations in which groups of people not of kin operate easily for common economic ends, according to Francis Fukuyama. We know that faith leads directly to mutual trust; therefore, we can reason that faith also results in reciprocity.
The work of Sanjeev Goyal finds that reciprocity is determined by the structure of the relationships in a group. According to Goyal, “The structure of relations, by itself, provides a form of social collateral that allows cooperative relations to exist.” He continues, “connections in the network have associated consumption value, which serves as social collateral.” Social capital mitigates the risk of the various social dilemmas, he argues, which reduces transaction costs of all types.
Without using the word “reciprocity”, Goyal is clearly describing the changing value of mutual exchange based on the value of the network’s social capital. Robert Putnam agrees with Goyal when he states that “Networks of community engagement foster sturdy norms of reciprocity.” As faith directly leads to the social virtues of Altruism, Cooperativeness, Honesty, Justice, Liberty, and Solidarity, as discussed above, we can say, without a doubt, that faith, expressed collectively, does create a “network of community engagement”, as said by Putnam. As faith expressed collectively creates a network of community engagement and connections, and “connections in the network have associated consumption value,” as said by Goyal, faith expressed collectively must lead to reciprocity. Not only that, but faith expressed collectively creates a group, the structure of which, “by itself, provides a form of social collateral that allows cooperative relations to exist,” again quoting Goyal. As social collateral, or social capital, cannot exist without reciprocity, we can again assume that faith does lead to reciprocity.
Further, this large scale study found that people who believe in certain religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, have more prosocial preferences. These preferences include higher levels positive reciprocity. See a modified version of the study’s Fig. S7. below, which compares the effect sizes of gender and religion.
Yes, faith does clearly lead to reciprocity.
Thanks for reading!