Item Details

Past Its Prime? A Methodological Overview and Critique of Religious Priming Research in Social Psychology

Issue: (0) ADVANCE ACCESS TO FORTHCOMING ARTICLES

Journal: Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion

Subject Areas: Religious Studies Cognitive Studies Linguistics

DOI: 10.1558/jcsr.38411

Abstract:

Social psychologists have frequently used priming methodologies to explore how religion can impact behaviour. Despite this, no consensus currently exists on whether religious priming effects are replicable or consistently observed across a range of spiritual beliefs. Moreover, mixed evidence highlights possible methodological shortcomings within the priming literature as well as theoretical ambiguity regarding the contents of different primes. The current article examines four types of religious priming methodologies that are frequently used in social-psychological research (explicit, implicit, subliminal, and contextual) and critically inspects the current landscape of the religious priming literature. We highlight theoretical issues and suggest methodological improvements that should facilitate a clearer understanding of when and how religion influences human behaviour.

Author: Shoko Watanabe, Sean M. Laurent

View Original Web Page

References :

Abrams, Richard L. 2008. “Influence of Category Size and Target Set Size on Unconscious Priming by Novel Words.” Experimental Psychology 55(3): 189–194. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169.55.3.189

Ahmed, Ali, and Mats Hammarstedt. 2011. “The Effect of Subtle Religious Representations on Cooperation.” International Journal of Social Economics 38(11): 900–910. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068291111171405

Ahmed, Ali M. and Osvaldo Salas. 2009. “Is the Hand of God Involved in Human Cooperation?” International Journal of Social Economics 36(1): 70–80. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068290910921190

———. 2011. “Implicit Influences of Christian Religious Representations on Dictator and Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Decisions.” The Journal of Socio-Economics 40(3): 242–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2010.12.013

———. 2013. “Religious Context and Prosociality: An Experimental Study from Valparaíso, Chile.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52(3): 627–637. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12045

Aveyard, Mark E. 2014. “A Call to Honesty: Extending Religious Priming of Moral Behaviour to Middle Eastern Muslims.” PLoS ONE 9(7): e99447. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0099447

 

Bakker, Marjan, Annette van Dijk and Jelte M. Wicherts. 2012. “The Rules of the Game Called Psychological Science.” Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science 7(6): 543–554. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612459060

Bargh, John A., and Tanya L. Chartrand. 2000. “The Mind in the Middle: A Practical Guide to Priming and Automaticity Research.” In Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology, edited by Harry T. Reis and Charles M. Judd, 253–285. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Benjamin, Daniel J., James J. Choi, and Geoffrey Fisher. 2016. “Religious Identity and Economic Behaviour.” The Review of Economic and Statistics 98(4): 617–637. https://doi:10.1162/REST_a_00586

Billingsley, Joseph, Cristina M Gomes, and Michael E McCullough. 2018. “Implicit and Explicit Influences of Religious Cognition on Dictator Game Transfers.” Royal Society Open Science 5(8): 170238–170238. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170238

Brulin, Joel G., Peter C. Hill, Kristin Laurin, Mario Mikulincer and Pehr Granqvist. 2018. “Religion vs. the Welfare State—the Importance of Cultural Context for Religious Schematicity and Priming.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 10(3): 276–287. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000200

Cesario, Joseph. 2014. “Priming, Replication, and the Hardest Science.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 9(1): 40–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613513470

Chabris, Christopher F., Patrick R. Heck, Jaclyn Mandart, Daniel J. Benjamin and Daniel J. Simons. 2019. “No Evidence That Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth: Two Failures to Replicate Williams and Bargh (2008).” Social Psychology 50: 127–132. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000361

Chan, Kai Qin, Eddie Mun Wai Tong and Yan Lin Tan. 2014. “Taking a Leap of Faith: Reminders of God Lead to Greater Risk Taking.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 5(8): 901–909. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614537309

Clobert, Magali, Vassilis Saroglou and Kwang-Kuo Hwang. 2015. “Buddhist Concepts as Implicitly Reducing Prejudice and Increasing Prosociality.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41(4): 513–525. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215571094

DeBono, Amber, Azim F. Shariff, Sarah Poole and Mark Muraven. 2016. “Forgive Us Our Trespasses: Priming a Forgiving (but Not a Punishing) God Increases Unethical Behaviour.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9: S1–S10. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000105

Devine, Patricia G. 1989. “Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components.” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 56(1): 5–18.

Doyen, Stéphane, Olivier Klein, Cora-Lise Pichon and Axel Cleeremans. 2012. “Behavioural Priming: It’s All in the Mind, but Whose Mind?” PLoS ONE 7(1): e29081. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029081

Duhaime, Erik P. 2015. “Is the Call to Prayer a Call to Cooperate? A Field Experiment on the Impact of Religious Salience on Prosocial Behaviour.” Judgment and Decision Making 10(6): 593–596.

Eckel, Catherine C, and Philip J. Grossman. 2004. “Giving to Secular Causes by the Religious and Nonreligious: An Experimental Test of the Responsiveness of Giving to Subsidies.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 33(2): 271–289. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764004263423

Fahmy, Dalia. 2019. “Among Religious ‘Nones’: Atheists and Agnostics Know the Most about Religion.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/21/among-religious-nones-atheists-and-agnostics-know-the-most-about-religion/

Fehr, Ryan., Michele J. Gelfand and Monisha Nag. 2010. “The Road to Forgiveness: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of Its Situational and Dispositional Correlates.” Psychological Bulletin 136(5): 894–914. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019993

Ferguson, Melissa J., and John A. Bargh. 2004. “How Social Perception Can Automatically Influence Behaviour.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(1): 33–39.

Gervais, Will M., Stephanie E. McKee and Sarah Malik. 2020. “Do Religious Primes Increase Risk Taking? Evidence against ‘Anticipating Divine Protection’ in Two Preregistered Direct Replications of Kupor, Laurin, and Levav (2015).” Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620922477

Gervais, Will M., and Maxine B. Najle. 2018. “How Many Atheists Are There?” Social Psychological and Personality Science 9(1): 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617707015

Gervais, Will M., and Ara Norenzayan. 2012. “Like a Camera in the Sky? Thinking about God Increases Public Self-Awareness and Socially Desirable Responding.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48(1): 298–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.006

Gillum, R. Frank, and Kevin S. Masters. 2010. “Religiousness and Blood Donation” Journal of Health Psychology 15(2): 163–172. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105309345171

Ginges, Jeremy, Ian Hansen and Ara Norenzayan. 2009. “Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks.” Psychological Science 20(2): 224–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02270.x

Gomes, Cristina M., and Michael E. McCullough. 2015. “The Effects of Implicit Religious Primes on Dictator Game Allocations: A Preregistered Replication Experiment.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144(6): e94–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000027

Hadaway, C. Kirk, Penny L. Marler and Mark Chaves. 1998. “Overreporting Church Attendance in America: Evidence that Demands the Same Verdict.” American Sociological Review 63(1): 122–130.

Henrich, Joseph, Jean Ensminger, Richard McElreath, Abigail Barr, Clark Barrett et al. 2010. “Markets, Religion, Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment.” Science 327(5972): 1480–1484.

Henrich, Joseph, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan. 2010. “The Weirdest People in the World?” Behavioural and Brain Sciences 33: 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X

Hoffmann, Lisa, Matthias Basedau, Simone Gobien and Sebastian Prediger. 2019. “Universal Love or One True Religion? Experimental Evidence of the Ambivalent Effect of Religious Ideas on Altruism and Discrimination.” American Journal of Political Science (October): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12479

Hofmann, Wilhelm, Daniel C. Wisneski, Mark J. Brandt and Linda J. Skitka. 2014. “Morality in Everyday Life.” Science 345(6202): 1340–1343. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218775075

Ioannidis, John P. A. 2005. “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” PLoS Med 2(8): e124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

John, Leslie K., George Loewenstein and Drazen Prelec. 2012. “Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices with Incentives for Truth Telling.” Psychological Science 23(5): 524–532. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611430953

Johnson, Kathryn A., Yexin Jessica Li, Adam B. Cohen and Morris A. Okun. 2013. “Friends in High Places: The Influence of Authoritarian and Benevolent God-Concepts on Social Attitudes and Behaviours.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 5(1): 15–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030138

Johnson, Kathryn A., Rabia Memon, Armeen Alladin, Adam B. Cohen and Morris A. Okun. 2015. “Who Helps the Samaritan? The Influence of Religious vs. Secular Primes on Spontaneous Helping of Members of Religious Outgroups.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 15: 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342147

Kahneman, Daniel. 2012. “A Proposal to Deal with Questions about Priming Effects,” September 26, 2012. https://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.6716.1349271308!/suppinfoFile/Kahneman%20Letter.pdf.

———. 2014. “A New Etiquette for Replication.” Social Psychology 45(4): 310–311. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000202

Kerr, Norbert L. 1998. “HARKing: Hypothesizing after the Results Are Known.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 2(3): 196–217. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0203_4

Kouider, Sid, and Stanislas Dehaene. 2007. “Levels of Processing during Non-Conscious Perception: A Critical Review of Visual Masking.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362(1481): 857–875. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2093

Kupor, Daniella M., Kristin Laurin and Jonathan Levav. 2015. “Anticipating Divine Protection? Reminders of God Can Increase Nonmoral Risk Taking.” Psychological Science 26(4): 374–384. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614563108

 

LaBouff, Jordan P., Wade C. Rowatt, Megan K. Johnson and Callie Finkle. 2012. “Differences in Attitudes Toward Outgroups in Religious and Nonreligious Contexts in a Multinational Sample: A Situational Context Priming Study.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 22(1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.634778

Lang, Martin, Panagiotis Mitkidis, Radek Kundt, Aaron Nichols, Lenka KrajĨíková, and Dimitris Xygalatas. 2016. “Music as a Sacred Cue? Effects of Religious Music on Moral Behaviour.” Frontiers in Psychology 7(June). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00814

Laurin, Kristin, Aaron C. Kay and Gráinne M. Fitzsimons. 2012. “Divergent Effects of Activating Thoughts of God on Self-Regulation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102(1): 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025971

Laurin, Kristin, Azim F. Shariff, Joseph Henrich and Aaron C. Kay. 2012. “Outsourcing Punishment to God: Beliefs in Divine Control Reduce Earthly Punishment.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279(1741): 3272–3281. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0615

Mazar, Nina, On Amir and Dan Ariely. 2008. “The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance.” Journal of Marketing Research 45(6): 633–644. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633

McKay, Ryan T., Charles Efferson, Harvey Whitehouse and Ernst Fehr. 2011. “Wrath of God: Religious Primes and Punishment.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278(1713): 1858–1863. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2125

McPhetres, Jonathon, Jonathan Jong and Miron Zuckerman. 2020. “Religious Americans Have Less Positive Attitudes Toward Science, but This Does Not Extend to Other Cultures.” Social Psychological and Personality Sciencehttps://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620923239

McPhetres, Jonathon, and Miron Zukerman. 2018. “Religiosity Predicts Negative Attitudes Towards Science and Lower Levels of Science Literacy” PLoS ONE 13 (11): e0207125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207125

Mill, John Stuart. 1965. A System of Logic. 8th ed. London: Longmans Green.

Nieuwboer, Wieteke, Hein van Schie, Johan Karremans and Daniël Wigboldus. 2016. “Supernatural Agency Attributions as Possible Mediator of Forgiveness.” Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 3(1): 85–110. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.v3i1.18402

Nisbett, Richard E., and Timothy D. Wilson. 1977. “Telling More than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes.” Psychological Review 84(3): 231–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231

Nosek, Brian A., and Daniël Lakens. 2014. “Registered Reports: A Method to Increase the Credibility of Published Results.” Social Psychology 45(3): 137–141. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000192

 

Nosek, Brian A., Jeffrey R. Spies and Matt Motyl. 2012. “Scientific Utopia: II. Reconstructing Incentives and Practices to Promote Truth Over Publishablity.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(6): 615–631. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612459058

O’Donnell, Michael, Leif D. Nelson, Evi Ackermann, Balazs Aczel, Athfah Akhtar et al. 2018. “Registered Replication Report: Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998).” Perspectives on Psychological Science 13(2): 268–294. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618755704

O’Lone, Katherine and Ryan T. McKay. 2016. “Divine Forgiveness and Mortal Support for State-Sanctioned Punishment.” Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 4(2): 268–294. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.34356

Open Science Collaboration. 2012. “An Open, Large-Scale, Collaborative Effort to Estimate the Reproducibility of Psychological Science.” Perspective on Psychological Science 7(6): 657–660. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716

Parra, Juan Carlos, George Joseph, and Quentin Wodon. 2016. “Religion and Social Cooperation: Results from an Experiment in Ghana.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 14(3): 65–72. http://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2016.1215845

Pichon, Isabelle, Giulio Boccato and Vassilis Saroglou. 2007. “Nonconscious Influences of Religion on Prosociality: A Priming Study.” European Journal of Social Psychology 37(5): 1032–1045. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.416

Preston, Jesse L. and Ryan Ritter. 2013. “Different Effects of Religion and God on Prosociality with the Ingroup and Outgroup.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39(11): 1471–1483. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213499937

Purzycki, Benjamin Grant, Coren Apicella, Quentin D. Atkinson, Emma Cohen, Rita Anne McNamara, Aiyana K. Willard, Dimitris Xygalatas, Ara Norenzayan, and Joseph Henrich. 2016. “Moralistic Gods, Supernatural Punishment and the Expansion of Human Sociality.” Nature 530(7590): 327–330. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16980

Purzycki, Benjamin Grant, Joseph Henrich, Coren Apicella, Quentin D. Atkinson, Adam Baimel, Emma Cohen, Rita Anne McNamara, Aiyana K. Willard, Dimitris Xygalatas, and Ara Norenzayan. 2018. “The Evolution of Religion and Morality: A Synthesis of Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence from Eight Societies.” Religion, Brain & Behaviour 8(2): 101–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1267027

Randolph-Seng, Brandon, and Michael E. Nielsen. 2007. “Honesty: One Effect of Primed Religious Representations.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 17(4): 303–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508610701572812

Ritter, Ryan S., and Jesse Lee Preston. 2013. “Representations of Religious Words: Insights for Religious Priming Research.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52(3): 494–507. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12042

 

Rounding, Kevin, Albert Lee, Jill A. Jacobson and Li-Jun Ji. 2012. “Religion Replenishes Self-Control.” Psychological Science 23(6): 635–642. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611431987

Ruiter, Stijn, and Nan Dirk De Graaf. 2010. “National Religious Context and Volunteering: More Rigorous Tests Supporting the Association.” American Sociological Review 75(1): 179-184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122409359168

Rutchick, Abraham M. 2010. “Deus Ex Machina: The Influence of Polling Place on Voting Behaviour.” Political Psychology 31(2): 209–225. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2009.00749.x

Sagioglou, Christina, and Matthias Forstmann. 2013. “Activating Christian Religious Concepts Increases Intolerance of Ambiguity and Judgment Certainty.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49(5): 933–939. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.05.003

Saroglou, Vassilis, Olivier Corneille and Patty Van Cappellen. 2009. “‘Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening’: Religious Priming Activates Submissive Thoughts and Behaviours.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 19(3): 143–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508610902880063

Schumann, Karina, Ian McGregor, Kyle A. Nash and Michael Ross. 2014. “Religious Magnanimity: Reminding People of Their Religious Belief System Reduces Hostility after Threat.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107(3): 432–453. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036739

Sedikides, Constantine, and Jochen E. Gebauer. 2010. “Religiosity as Self-Enhancement: A Meta-Analysis of the Relation between Socially Desirable Responding and Religiosity.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(1): 17–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351002

Shanks, David R., Ben R. Newell, Eun Hee Lee, Divya Balakrishnan, Lisa Ekelund et al. 2013. “Priming Intelligent Behaviour: An Elusive Phenomenon.” PLoS ONE 8(4): e56515. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0056515

Shariff, Azim F. and Ara Norenzayan. 2007. “God Is Watching You: Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behaviour in an Anonymous Economic Game.” Psychological Science 18(9): 803–809. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01983.x

———. 2011. “Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behaviour.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21(2): 85–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2011.556990

Shariff, Azim F., Aiyana K. Willard, Teresa Andersen and Ara Norenzayan. 2016. “Religious Priming: A Meta-Analysis with a Focus on Prosociality.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 20(1): 27–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868314568811

 

Sharp, Carissa A., Peter J. Rentfrow and Nicholas J. S. Gibson. 2017. “One God but Three Concepts: Complexity in Christians’ Representations of God.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9(1): 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000053

Simmons, Joseph P., Leif D. Nelson and Uri Simonsohn. 2011. “False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant.” Psychological Science 22(11): 1359–1366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417632

Spellman, Barbara A. 2015. “A Short (Personal) Future History of Revolution 2.0.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 10(6): 886–899. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615609918

Srull, Thomas K., and Robert S. Wyer. 1979. “The Role of Category Accessibility in the Interpretation of Information about Persons: Some Determinants and Implications.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37(10): 1660–1672. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.10.1660

Stroebe, Wolfgang. 2019. “What Can We Learn from Many Labs Replications?” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 41(2): 91–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1577736

Toburen, Tina, and Brian P. Meier. 2010. “Priming God-Related Concepts Increases Anxiety and Task Persistence.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 29(2): 127–143. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2010.29.2.127

van Elk, Michiel, Dora Matzke, Quentin F. Gronau, Maime Guan, Joachim Vandekerckhove and Eric-Jan Wagenmakers. 2015. “Meta-Analyses Are No Substitute for Registered Replications: A Skeptical Perspective on Religious Priming.” Frontiers in Psychology 6(September). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01365

van Elk, Michiel, Bastiaan T. Rutjens, Joop van der Pligt and Frenk van Harreveld. 2016. “Priming of Supernatural Agent Concepts and Agency Detection.” Religion, Brain & Behaviour 6(1): 4–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2014.933444

Van Leeuwen, Neil, and Michiel van Elk. 2019. “Seeking the Supernatural: The Interactive Religious Experience Model.” Religion, Brain & Behaviour 9(3): 221–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2018.1453529

van‘t Veer, Anna E. and Roger Giner-Sorolla. 2016. “Pre-Registration in Social Psychology—A Discussion and Suggested Template.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 67(November): 2–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.03.004

Vazire, Simine. 2018. “Implications of the Credibility Revolution for Productivity, Creativity, and Progress.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 13(4): 411–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617751884

 

Verschuere, Bruno, Ewout H. Meijer, Ariane Jim, Katherine Hoogesteyn, Robin Orthey et al. 2018. “Registered Replication Report on Amir, and Ariely (2008).” Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 1(3): 299–317. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918781032

Watanabe, Shoko, and Sean M. Laurent. 2019. “Vengeance Is God’s, Not Mine: The Effect of Divine and Secular Retribution Concepts on Third-Party Punishment.” Poster presented at the Twentieth Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Portland, OR.

———. 2017. “View of God, Repentance, and Atonement.” Unpublished raw data.

White, Cindel J. M., John M. Kelly, Azim F. Shariff and Ara Norenzayan. 2019. “Supernatural Norm Enforcement: Thinking About Karma and God Reduces Selfishness Among Believers.”&n