Overlap of religiosity and spirituality among Filipinos and its implications towards religious prosociality

Abstract

Religious people help. A bulk of studies indicates that the high importance an individual gives to his/her religion is associated with prosocial behavior (e.g., Saroglou, 2013). Although religiosity is consistently associated with prosocial behavior, most Western studies found that religiosity is more related to helping close others whereas spirituality is associated to helping both close and unknown others. Yet, when applied in Filipino context, peculiarities were found. Specifically, correlation result indicates that the religiosity and spirituality among Filipinos are strongly associated. Moreover, result on moderated hierarchical regression analysis shows that religious prosociality among Filipinos does not depend on the social categorization of the target of help. Together, these results reflect the dynamics of religiosity and prosocial behavior among Filipinos.