Is running a query on a view any faster or slower than running the raw query itself? Is there performance reasons to use views?  

I realize this answer might be different per database. I'm using MS SQL but am curious about any database really. Does a view in general cause a performance optimization over its raw sql query equivalent?

Only thing I can think of is the select string size itself sent to the server... which is almost never a factor that anyone cares about.
Creating view will not give you any performance gain but may help you with abstraction of underlying object and management of object level security for your users.
Using Index view can definitely help you by preparing data (aggregate, computation etc) before hand but you need to be careful as explained in detail here.