Religious diversity is often viewed as a source of interpersonal and intergroup conflict. However, previous research has shown that religious costly signaling enhances the level of trust in the target individual within and across religious affiliations (Hall et al., 2015). Yet, the previous study was conducted exclusively on Christians in the United States, where Christianity is the dominant religion. We replicate and extend the empirical evidence by conducting two experimental studies examining the effect of religious costly signaling on trust with (1) Muslim participants and (2) Christian participants, in a country where Islam is the dominant and official religion. The positive effect of religious costly signaling behavior on trust was shown in both samples, while gender was found to be a qualifier of the effect. The findings contribute to the literature on religious diversity as well as the emergence of asymmetric trust.
