“See no Evil. Feel no Evil?”: Exploring Emotional Responses to Masked Moral Violations in Religious and non-Religious Singaporean Participants

Abstract

Previous psychological research has provided mixed evidence for whether religious individuals are more sensitive to moral violations compared to non-religious individuals. Empirically, firstly, it is unclear whether religious individuals experience higher physiological arousal to immorality, and secondly, if they do, whether this arousal is an unconscious-intuitive response or whether it involves conscious awareness. In the current research, we explored these two empirical questions. We explored the effects of backward masked morally improper elicitors in religious and non-religious participants from Singapore, using heart-rate assessment, and self-reports for the appraisal of immorality. Religious and non-religious individuals did not show different self-report ratings for immorality, although, surprisingly, religious individuals showed higher heart-rate responses. These responses were reported only for hits but not for miss responses for signal-detection performance. This suggests that religious individuals do, indeed, experience higher physiological responsivity to immoral elicitors and that this effect involves conscious awareness.

Learning emotional dialects: A British population study of cross-cultural communication

“…9-12;Tsikandilakis, Leong, et al, 2021;pp. 10 & 30; see also Leong et al, 2023) and also, critically, no significant differences and Bayesian evidence for among cohorts and conditions expression recognition and emotional expression learning. Nevertheless, and despite that a national population is commonly inherently multi-culturally stratified, a significant unexplored avenue for further research (see Hall, 2022) and also possibly a bias (see Verkuyten, 2007) in relevant research is the assessmentor lack thereofof within-population variances such racial background and culture of ancestry in exploring emotional recognition and emotional learning (see Tam & Milfont, 2020).…”

“Sentio Ergo Est”: Unmasking the Emotional Realities of Misperception

“…were not being diagnosed or having been previously diagnosed with a DSM Axis I or II disorder, and current or previous alcohol/drug abuse through self-reports. The participants were also assessed with questionnaires (see Leong et al, 2023;pp. 6-9).…”

“…Subsequently to the presentation, psychophysiological responses, such as subcutaneous sweating (SCR) and heart-rate (HR) responses, and/or participant ratings, such as ratings for valence and intensity, are assessed to explore unconscious responses to the masked targets (see for example Lo & Zeki, 2014;Minkin et al, 2019; for participant ratings format developments, see Haralabopoulos et al, 2020;Bond et al, 2021;Yu et al, 2022;Leong et al, 2023).…”