Encyclopedia of Psychology & Religion (8 entries)

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 that psychological processes involved?

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 ones 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. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, 1973;  Porter, 1993)

In psychology, the term charity is seldom indexed in social psychology and psychology of religion textbooks. This does not mean the topic is seldom studied:  charity has come under the heading of altruistic behaviour in general (Macaulay & Berkowitz, 1970).  Altruism has been defined as ‘behaviour 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 & Bierhoff, 1991), the behaviour being carried out voluntarily. 

There has been much 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 & Gross, 1968). More recently, Seligman (2001) has argued that the practice of charity and kindness stems from a psychological strength, the practice of which will result in greater psychological health. For example Loewenthal (2007) cites 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. 

Does religion promote altruism in general and charitable behaviour in particular? Most recent work has supported the view that this is the case. 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 (1998) reported that charitable giving was affected mainly by whether a person professed a religion, regardless of what that religion was. The relations between socio-economic 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 to voluntary work (Lynn & 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 non-religious causes, as well as to religious causes (Brooks, 2003).

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