Abstract: When might religious belief lower ethical standards? We propose a theory of religion and immorality that makes 3 central predictions. First, people will judge immoral acts as more permissible when they make divine attributions for these acts, seeing them as enabled by an intervening God. Second, people will be more likely to make divine attributions when evaluating passive immorality (e.g., keeping a lost wallet) than active immorality (e.g., pick-pocketing) because human action makes people less likely to infer God’s agency. Third, believers will be more likely than nonbelievers to perpetrate passive immorality, because they feel justified taking advantage of God’s beneficence. Thirteen studies support these predictions. Our findings show that people who attribute events to God judge morally questionable behaviors more leniently (Study 1), American states with more prayer groups have higher rates of crime (Study 2), and experimentally manipulated divine attributions lead people to see selfish and harmful behavior as less immoral (Study 3). Divine attributions—and corresponding moral permissibility—are more likely with passive immorality than with active immorality (Studies 4–7). Compared with nonbelievers, believers are more likely to justify their own passive immorality (Study 8), and to commit everyday acts of passive immorality such as parking across multiple spaces (Study 9) and keeping overdue library books (Study 10). A novel behavioral economics task reveals that although passive immorality is not affected by religious priming, it does correlate with self-reported religious belief (Studies 11–13). Finally, an internal meta-analysis supports our predictions.
General Discussion
Does God make you good, or does He help you justify immorality? We suggest that both alternatives are true, and that the link between religion and morality is more complex than once thought. Properties of religious belief such as supernatural monitoring and punishment may encourage prosociality (Johnson, 2005; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008), but beliefs in divine intervention seem to encourage the rationalization of immorality, especially in cases of passive immorality when human agency is absent. The present research provides support for this idea, revealing that global religious belief has little zero-order association with moral judgment. Instead, divine attributions increase moral permissiveness, whereas global religious belief predicts stricter moral judgments once variance associated with divine attributions has been removed.
Thirteen studies—and an internal meta-analysis—reveal evidence supporting three key predictions. Our first prediction was that people who make divine attributions for immoral acts see them as more permissible (Studies 1–3). Study 1 used self-report measures to show that divine attributions predict permissive moral judgment, whereas global religious belief predict stricter moral judgments once variance associated with divine attributions has been removed. Study 2 found that prayer group membership—a group-level proxy for divine attributions—positively predicts statewide crime rates whereas religious belief negatively but nonsignificantly predicts crime. Study 3 replicated the correlational link between divine attributions and moral permissibility with an experimental manipulation of divine attributions.
Our second prediction was that divine attributions for immorality should be most common in cases of passive immorality—when human agency is ambiguous— because these situations encourage people to infer God’s agency (Studies 4 –7). Studies 4 and 5 revealed that passive (vs. active) immorality predicts divine attributions, which are linked to seeing other people’s transgressions as more morally permissible. Study 6 showed that this effect is strongest when God’s agency is salient via prayer, and Study 7 showed that the active-passive divide cannot be explained by differences in act severity.
Our third prediction was that, because believers can make divine attributions for passive immorality, they should be more likely than nonbelievers to perpetrate these acts (Studies 8 –10). Study 8 found that believers are more likely to justify their past passive immorality compared with nonbelievers, an effect that is mediated by divine attributions. Studies 9 and 10 showed that religion is linked to two forms of real-world passive immorality: failing to correct bad parking (Study 9) and failing to return overdue library books (Study 10). Studies 11–13 also showed that religious belief predicts more passive immorality in a novel economic game, though these effects were not impacted by religious priming.
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