Prior research has indicated that religiosity and ability to self-regulate are positively associated, but this relationship has yet to be addressed experimentally. To investigate whether and under what conditions higher religiosity may be associated with greater self-regulation, 75 participants either high (n = 38) or low (n = 37) in level of religiosity undertook a difficult and frustrating task requiring self-control (i.e., an unsolvable anagrams task). Before doing so, half of the participants performed a self-regulatory resource depleting task, whereas the other half proceeded directly to the difficult anagrams task. Time spent persisting on the anagrams task constituted the study's primary dependent variable. Level of religiosity interacted with level of self-regulatory resources such that when participants had not been depleted, level of religiosity was unrelated to task persistence. However, when participants' self-regulatory resources had first been depleted, participants high in religiosity persisted significantly longer on the anagrams task compared with participants low in religiosity, an effect that remained significant even after controlling for potential confounds. This research suggests highly religious individuals possess greater self-regulatory ability, particularly under circumstances of reduced self-regulatory resources. Greater self-regulatory ability, in turn, may help explain the health benefits that religious individuals often enjoy.

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