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I Will Put My Law in Their Minds: Social Control and Cheating Behavior Among Catholics and Protestants
Author(s) -
Quiamzade Alain,
Sommet Nicolas,
Laborde Javiera Burgos,
L'Huillier JeanPaul,
Guiso Luigi
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12337
Subject(s) - heteronomy , social control , protestantism , social psychology , norm (philosophy) , cheating , autonomy , control (management) , context (archaeology) , psychology , dimension (graph theory) , sociology , law , political science , economics , paleontology , management , biology , mathematics , pure mathematics
Catholics and Protestants differ in terms of social autonomy versus heteronomy. We propose that the regulation of behavior in accordance with social norms depends on the social control exercised by an authority for Catholics more than it does for Protestants. Two experiments measured cheating behavior (the transgression of a social norm) as a function of the religious group (Protestant vs. Catholic) and social control (with vs. without). Catholics were found to be more responsive to social control, that is, to cheat less when social control was salient, whereas Protestants' behavior did not depend on this dimension. In Study 2, intrinsic‐extrinsic religiousness was found to mediate this difference. Results are discussed in the context of the effects of public policies based on social control.