این مطالعه که به نظرم شاهکاری در  نوع خود است نه تنها به اثر خداباوری بر رفتار اخلاقی میپردازد بلکه شرایطی  را نشان میدهد که خداباوری میتواند باعث افزایش یا کاهش رفتار اخلاقی باشد  .این مطالعه توسط افراد فراوان و در اهداف مختلف مورد استفاده قرار گرفته  است . ابتدا یک بررسی کوتاه از مطالعه را از دانشگاه بریتیش کلمبیا خدمت  خوانندگان محترم نشان میدهم .
  Religion Makes People Helpful and Generous - Under Certain Conditions: UBC Researchers
  Belief in God encourages people to be helpful, honest and generous,  but only under certain psychological conditions, according to University  of British Columbia researchers who analyzed the past three decades of  social science research.
  Religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in  prosocial behaviour – acts that benefit others at a personal cost – when  it enhances the individual’s reputation or when religious thoughts are  freshly activated in the person’s mind, say UBC social psychologists Ara  Norenzayan and Azim Shariff 
  Their paper “
The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality” appears in the October 3 issue of Science Magazine. 
  The two-part paper first reviews data from anthropology, sociology,  psychology and economics. Norenzayan and Shariff then go on to explore  how religion, by encouraging cooperation, became a factor in making  possible the rise of large and stable societies made of genetically  unrelated individuals.
  To date, says Norenzayan, the public debate whether religion fosters  cooperation and trust has largely been driven by opinion and anecdote.
  “We wanted to look at the hard scientific evidence,” says Norenzayan, an associate professor in the Dept. of Psychology.
  The investigators found complementary results across the disciplines:
  
- Empirical      data within anthropology suggests there is more  cooperation among      religious societies than the non-religious,  especially when group survival      is under threat.
- Economic      experiments indicate that religiosity increases levels of trust among      participants.
- Psychology       experiments show that thoughts of an omniscient, morally concerned  God      reduce levels of cheating and selfish behaviour.
   “This type of religiously-motivated ‘virtuous’ behaviour has likely  played a vital social role throughout history,” says Shariff, a  Psychology PhD student.
  
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/medi...mr-08-132.html
  
  اما اصل مطالعه که حدود 13 صفحه است و خواندن آنرا توصیه میکنم در این آدرس وجود دارد .
  dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2011.556990
  
  
بطور خلاصه در این مطالعه نشان داده  شده است که نه تنها باور به خدا و زندگی پس از مرگ موجب افزایش رفتار  اخلاقی برای باورمندان میشود بلکه علت وجود برخی مطالعات هرچند اندک (  بنابر قول نویسندگان مطالعه ) که بین رفتارهای اخلاقی بیخدایان و خداباوران  تفاوتی قائل نمیشنود یا اینکه حتی در برخی موارد خداباوران رفتار غیر  اخلاقی بیشتری نسبت به خداباوران دارند چیست !