Encyclopedia of Psychology & Religion (7 updated)

How has charity been seen in religious tradition? How has it been understood by psychologists? What are the relations between religious affiliation and charitable activity, and how well do we understand the psychological processes involved?

Religion and Charity

The practice of charity is demanded in all religions (Argyle 2000): all major religions have clear requirements – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and others. Charity is generally seen in two ways in religious tradition. First, donating a fixed proportion of one’s income and agricultural produce to appropriate beneficiaries is a religious duty. Religious traditions also endorse providing assistance – financial, food, and whatever else is required – to the needy. These two practices overlap, but there are distinct religious duties: taking and donating a fixed proportion of property, even if there is no desperately needy recipient and assisting the needy – even if one has already given away ones tithes, one is still obliged to help. Charity is considered as enhancing the spirituality of the donor and is regarded by many commentators as the highest religious virtue (e.g., Porter 1993; Shneur Zalman of Liadi 1796/1973).

Psychology and Charity

In psychology, the term “charity” is seldom indexed in social psychology and psychology of religion textbooks. This does not mean that the topic is seldom studied: charity has come under the heading of altruistic behavior in general (Macaulay and Berkowitz 1970). Altruism has been defined as “behavior that aims at a termination or reduction of an emergency, a neediness, or disadvantage of others and that primarily does not aim at the fulfillment of own interests” (Montada and Bierhoff 1991), the behavior being carried out voluntarily.

There was an early debate about whether altruism, helpfulness, and charity can be truly selfless or whether they result from innate own group and kin helpfulness or other motivations which are not selfless. These include increased status, social desirability or social approval, and the assuaging of guilt (Carlsmith and Gross 1968), and the closeness of the relationship between donor and the person requesting or needing the help (Maple 2012). There has been focus on positive psychology and the benefits and importance of practicing psychological strengths. Seligman ( 2002) has argued that the practice of charity and kindness results in greater psychological health. For example, Thoits and Hewitt ( 2001) examined the positive consequences for well-being flowing from volunteer work. Park et al. ( 2004) showed that love and kindness were among the character strengths consistently and robustly associated with life satisfaction. Loewenthal ( 2007) cited the case of a depressed holocaust survivor who reported a steady gain in psychological well-being after being advised by a rabbi to give charity regularly.

How Does Religion Affect Charity?

Does religion promote altruism in general and charitable behavior in particular? Most recent work has supported the view that this is the case (Inaba and Loewenthal 2009). For example, in the UK, in 1993, those for whom religion was said to be very important gave about $50 monthly, compared to $15 monthly from those who said religion was not important (Argyle 2000). In the USA (Myers 1992), weekly church attenders gave away 3.8 % of their income and non-attenders, 0.8 %. Regnerus et al. ( 1998) reported that charitable giving was affected mainly by whether a person professed a religion, regardless of what that religion was. The relations between socioeconomic status and charitable giving are slightly complex, but on the whole, the better-off give away more. The straightforward explanation of these findings is that religiously active people are likely to behave according to religious injunctions. The relations between religion and charity apply not only to financial giving but also to voluntary work (Lynn and Smith 1991) and to humanitarian compassion (Perkins 1992). Religiosity is a much better predictor of charitable giving and activity than is economic status, and religion predicts giving to nonreligious causes as well as to religious causes (Brooks 2003).

Conclusion

We can conclude that there is growing evidence that religious activity and identity correlate very reliably with the practice of charity, and some suggest that charitable activity may promote psychological health. There is great scope for more detailed investigation of the cognitive and motivational factors that underlie these effects.

See Also

Religiosity