Painful Religious Rituals Lead to Increased Charitable Giving

THE TIMES OF INDIA

A Hindu devotee, whose body is pierced with skewers, takes part in the religious 
festival of Panguni Uthiram in the southern Indian city of Chennai March 26, 2013.

INDIA---A study of extreme religious rituals has provided new evidence to support the longstanding theory that physically inflicting pain during communal ceremonies increases charitable behaviour. Researchers from Victoria University travelled to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean to observer a pair of contrasting religious rituals for the Hindu festival of Thaipusam. One of the rituals was "low ordeal" - involving only group singing and prayers - whilst the other was 'high ordeal' , with participants piercing their bodies with needles and skewers, dragging carts attached to the skin with hooks for four hours, and climbing a mountain barefoot. [link]