Religiosity as Self-Enhancement: A Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Socially Desirable Responding and Religiosity

Abstract

In a meta-analysis, the authors test the theoretical formulation that religiosity is a means for self-enhancement. The authors operationalized self-enhancement as socially desirable responding (SDR) and focused on three facets of religiosity: intrinsic, extrinsic, and religion-as-quest. Importantly, they assessed two moderators of the relation between SDR and religiosity. Macro-level culture reflected countries that varied in degree of religiosity (from high to low: United States, Canada, United Kingdom). Micro-level culture reflected U.S. universities high (Christian) versus low (secular) on religiosity. The results were generally consistent with the theoretical formulation. Both macro-level and micro-level culture moderated the relation between SDR and religiosity: This relation was more positive in samples that placed higher value on religiosity (United States > Canada > United Kingdom; Christian universities > secular universities). The evidence suggests that religiosity is partly in the service of self-enhancement.

Christian self-enhancement.

“…Moreover, the nuanced cross-cultural differences fit well with prior research on self-esteem and self-enhancement (Gebauer, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2012;Gebauer et al, 2017;Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010). Yet, those cross-cultural differences did not emerge as consistently as other results.…”

“…Taken together, our findings bode well with literature that Christian self-enhancement (in all three domains) was somewhat stronger in Christian countries (where Christians' self-esteem is high) relative to secular countries (where Christians' self-esteem is low). In fact, Sedikides and Gebauer's (2010) meta-analysis on religiosity and SDR found a comparable cross-cultural result pattern (i.e., higher relation between religiosity and SDR in more religious countries). One goal of Studies 3A-3J was to further gauge the role of country-level religiosity for Christian selfenhancement.…”

Humble Self-Enhancement: Religiosity and the Better-than-Average Effect

“…One hypothesis that has recently been suggested is that people with self-enhancing personalities tend to become more religious (Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010). Here we have argued for an alternative hypothesis saying that religious people tend to engage in religious self-stereotyping (Burris & Navarra, 2001).…”

“…This scale asks people whether they never tell a lie, or never cover up a mistake, or never do a number of other socially undesirable things that almost all people would do at some point or another. Metaanalyses of studies from several countries have established that impression management scores consistently tend to be higher among the devoutly religious (Trimble, 1997;Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010). The debate on how to interpret this finding is still ongoing, but we think there is compelling support for at least some of the effect being due to a tendency among religious people to enhance their self-descriptions (Burris & Navara, 2002;Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010).…”

Evaluating Implicit Sentiments for Sinners and Sins: A Cross-cultural Investigation

“…Some, however, have been experimental in nature (Batson et al, 1999;Batson et al, 2001;Batson et al, 2008;Goldfried & Miner, 2002;Mak & Tsang, 2008). But even in these experimental studies, participants had opportunities to rely on consciously-controlled processing to produce their sentiments for either sinful persons or sinful behaviors, and according to some researchers, it is likely they did so (Dovidio & Fazio, 1992;Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010).…”