The Implicit Nature of Intrinsic Religious Pursuit

Wenger, Jay L.

doi:10.1080/10508610709336853

Cited by 10 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Finally, two experiments show that awareness of one's religious shortcomings (i.e., discrepancies between one's religious goals and one's actual religious behavior) leads to a redoubling of religious goal-directed effort (Wenger, 2007). Taken together, these findings provide some initial support for the possibility that religion influences self-regulation through selfmonitoring.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…As noted above, Wenger (2007) found that when people considered their religious shortcomings (e.g., by writing about a time when they did not live up to their religious beliefs), they went on to spend more time reading a short passage entitled, "How can I know when it is God who is speaking to me?" On the basis of this finding, it seems tenable that people in such situations would be similarly motivated to consult their scriptures for behavioral guidance and that they would engage in self-change efforts on the basis of that guidance.…”

Section: Consulting Religious Textsmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications.

McCullough

Willoughby

2009

Psychological Bulletin

919

773

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Many of the links of religiousness with health, well-being, and social behavior may be due to religion's influences on self-control or self-regulation. Using Carver and Scheier's (1998) theory of self-regulation as a framework for organizing the empirical research, the authors review evidence relevant to 6 propositions: (a) that religion can promote self-control; (b) that religion influences how goals are selected, pursued, and organized; (c) that religion facilitates self-monitoring; (d) that religion fosters the development of self-regulatory strength; (e) that religion prescribes and fosters proficiency in a suite of self-regulatory behaviors; and (f) that some of religion's influences on health, well-being, and social behavior may result from religion's influences on self-control and self-regulation. The authors conclude with suggestions for future research.Keywords: religion, self-control, self-regulation, motivation, personalityReligion is a potent social force. History testifies to religion's ability to focus and coordinate human effort, to create awe and terror, to foster war and peace, to unify social groups, and to galvanize them against each other. In addition to religion's social power, however, religion is a psychological force that can influence the outcomes of individual human lives. Indeed, the range of health-related, behavioral, and social outcomes with which religiousness is associated is both provocative and puzzling.Consider these well-replicated findings. First, religiousness (measured variously as high levels of traditional religious belief; frequent involvement in religious institutions such as churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples; and engagement in religious practices such as reading scripture, worship, and prayer) has a small, positive association with longevity. In a meta-analytic review of 42 independent effect sizes, McCullough, Hoyt, Larson, Koenig, and Thoresen (2000) discovered that people who were highly religious were, on average, 29% more likely to be alive at any given follow-up point than were less religious people (95% confidence interval: 1.20 to 1.39). In a traditional narrative review of studies considered by the authors to be of high quality (e.g., studies with large, representative samples and adequate statistical control of potential confounds), Powell, Shahabi, and Thoresen (2003) likewise concluded that frequent religious service attendance was associated with a 25% reduction in mortality.Studies published after McCullough et al.'s (2000) and Powell et al.'s (2003) reviews have yielded similar conclusions in random samples of U.S. adults (Musick, House, & Williams, 2004); older Mexican Americans (T. D. Hill, Angel, Ellison, & Angel, 2005); and adults in Denmark (la Cour, Avlund, & Schultz-Larsen, 2006), Finland (Teinonen, Vahlberg, Isoaho, & Kivela, 2005), and Taiwan (Yeager et al., 2006). These latter studies have also revealed 25% to 30% reductions in mortality for religiously active people, even after controlling for reasonable sets of potential confounds...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Section: Consulting Religious Textsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications.

McCullough

Willoughby

2009

Psychological Bulletin

919

773

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Numerous other techniques are available for schema activation in addition to the narrative technique used by Wenger (2005). Religious schemas might be activated through prior completion of a questionnaire (e.g., Lundh & Czyzykow-Czarnocka, 2001), through priming with emotional religious phrases (e.g., Segal et al, 1995) or phrases designed to generate specific inferences (e.g., Dosher & Corbett, 1982), or through processing entire sentences made up of Stroop stimuli (e.g., Brega & Healy, 1999).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently however Wenger has used timing techniques as part of a programme of research into implicit religious cognition and its relation to religious orientation (Wenger, 2004(Wenger, , 2005Wenger & Yarbrough, 2005;Wenger & Daniels, 2005), 6 and a convergence of researchers in the theoretical literature has agreed that timed judgement paradigms represent a fruitful avenue for exploration (Hill, 1994(Hill, , 1995Hill & Pargament, 2003;Slater et al, 2001;Watts, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Experimental Investigation of Religious Cognition

Gibson¹

2018

Preprint

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Religious cognition may be defined as the cognitive processes and representational states involved in religion-related knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, behaviours, and experience. Religious content and information processing occurs both at an intellectual, propositional level and also at an affect-laden, implicational level. Many questions are unanswered in our understanding of religious cognition, but fundamental to them all is the question of how religious cognition can be measured. Psychology of religion has primarily used questionnaires to measure religious belief, but many limitations suggest the need for new methods that can tap into implicational religious cognition, such as God schemas, as well as propositional religious cognition, such as God concepts. The purpose of this investigation was to explore which experimental paradigms most successfully tap into implicational religious cognition, and thereby add a new set of measurement tools to those available to the psychologist of religion. A consideration of research into the schematic representation of self and other persons suggested multiple hypotheses that could be tested using experimental paradigms adapted from the social cognition and cognition and emotion literatures. I present findings from a series of five experiments that measured cognitive biases in attention, memory, and judgement speed that were hypothesized to result from implicational religious cognition.Two experiments adapted the emotional Stroop paradigm to explore the possibility of a religious Stroop effect. While evangelical Christians, non-evangelical Christians, and atheists did not differ in interference when colour-naming emotionally valent religious material, in a subsequent unexpected recall test evangelicals showed enhanced recall for religious but not control material. Three experiments adapted the self-reference effect paradigm to investigate the accessibility and centrality of God schemas relative to self-schemas. Though evangelical and non-evangelical Christians had relatively similar propositional beliefs about the character of God, the pattern of evangelicals’ speed in making God-referent judgements and subsequent recall of God-referent material suggested that their God schemas were better-elaborated, more efficient, and more affect-laden than those of non-evangelicals. Atheists were able to draw consistently on two different concepts of God, but did so slowly and with poor subsequent recall, indicating that their God schemas were poorly elaborated, inefficient, and affect-free.Though much research exploring these biases is still to be done, the findings of the current investigation suggest that incidental memory and judgement speed paradigms are successful in tapping into implicational religious cognition and can reveal differences not otherwise observable through more direct measurement.

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“…Alcohol is well known to disrupt self-regulatory processes (Fernandez-Serrano et al 2010;Heatherton and Wagner 2011;Pihl and Sutton 2009), and there is evidence that men with impaired self-regulatory skills are at increased risk for alcohol-related aggression (Giancola 2004). In recent years, evidence has come to light suggesting that beneficial aspects of religiosity may also be mediated by self-regulatory ability (Desmond, Ulmer, and Bader 2008;McCullough and Willoughby 2009;Rounding et al 2012;Walker et al 2007;Welch, Tittle, and Grasmick 2006) and self-monitoring (McCullough and Willoughby 2009;Randolph-Seng and Nielsen 2007;Shariff and Norenzayan 2007;Wenger 2007), which is a central component of self-regulation (Baumeister and Exline 1999).…”

Section: Rationale For the Present Investigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alcohol Reverses Religion's Prosocial Influence on Aggression

Duke

Giancola

2013

Scientific Study of Religion

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The relationship between religion and violence is controversial. Discrepant findings exist between survey studies and the limited number of experimental investigations of religiosity's influence on aggressive behavior. We have attempted to resolve this discrepancy by addressing previous limitations in the literature and assessing a heretofore‐untested moderator of religiosity and aggression: alcohol intoxication. This investigation included a community sample of 251 men and 269 women randomly assigned to either an acute alcohol intoxication condition or a placebo condition. Participants completed a series of questions drawn from standardized instruments of religiosity and spirituality prior to competing on an aggression laboratory paradigm in which electric shocks were received from, and administered to, a fictitious opponent under the guise of a competitive reaction‐time task. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant beverage‐by‐religiosity interaction. Religiosity predicted lower levels of aggression for participants in the placebo group and higher levels of aggression for intoxicated participants. Results indicated that high religiosity coupled with alcohol intoxication may be a risk factor for aggression. This novel finding may help to clarify previous discrepancies in studies of religiosity and aggression.

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The Implicit Nature of Intrinsic Religious Pursuit

Cited by 10 publications

References 22 publications

Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications.

Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications.

The Experimental Investigation of Religious Cognition

Alcohol Reverses Religion's Prosocial Influence on Aggression

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