From Without faith-based work, Provo and Utah not so high in volunteerism, study says

h/t /u/Apricot-tree here

Provo has the highest volunteerism rate in the nation at 56.5 percent, but that number may be deceiving according to a recent Utah Valley University study on volunteerism.

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Utah’s extremely poor voter turnout rate (particularly with local elections) suggests a general disconnect with civic affairs in favor of church and neighborhood engagement.

In fact, subtracting church-based volunteerism brings Utah’s volunteerism rate to 14.5 percent, below the national average of 16.5 percent.

In his textbook on the psychology of religion, Beit-Hallahmi writes:

What emerges from the research is that most religiously inspired altruism is parochial, limited to in-group members (Bernhard, Fischbacher and Fehr, 2006; Hoffmann, 2013). Hall, Matz, and Wood (2010) concluded that “religious humanitarianism” is largely directed at in-group members, and Norenzayan and Shariff (2008) stated that religious pro-sociality is primarily in-group altruism. Duriez (2004) and Saraglou (2006) suggested that not only does religiosity fail to reliably predict universal helping behavior but also that it is a mistake to even hold such an expectation. It should be kept in mind that the preference for religious in-group members is found in the case of most sub-identities, such as sex, age, race, and nationality (Fiske and Taylor, 2013). The issue is that religion is sometimes considered an exception.