A puzzle unsolved: failure to observe different effects of God and religion primes on intergroup attitudes

Ramsay, Jonathan E., Tong, Eddie M.W., Pang, Joyce S., and Chowdhury, Avijit (2016) A puzzle unsolved: failure to observe different effects of God and religion primes on intergroup attitudes. PLoS ONE, 11. e0147178.

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DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147178

View at Publisher Website: http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147...

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Abstract

Religious priming has been found to have both positive and negative consequences, and recent research suggests that the activation of God-related and community-related religious cognitions may cause outgroup prosociality and outgroup derogation respectively. The present research sought to examine whether reminders of God and religion have different effects on attitudes towards ingroup and outgroup members. Over two studies, little evidence was found for different effects of these two types of religious primes. In study 1, individuals primed with the words "religion", "God" and a neutral control word evaluated both ingroup and outgroup members similarly, although a marginal tendency towards more negative evaluations of outgroup members by females exposed to religion primes was observed. In study 2, no significant differences in attitudes towards an outgroup member were observed between the God, religion, and neutral priming conditions. Furthermore, the gender effect observed in study 1 did not replicate in this second study. Possible explanations for these null effects are discussed.


Item ID:	53751
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1932-6203
Keywords:	religion, priming, God, supraliminal, attitudes, prejudice, prosocial
Additional Information:	© 2016 Ramsay et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Date Deposited:	06 Jun 2018 03:30
FoR Codes:	52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5205 Social and personality psychology > 520504 Psychology of religion @ 75% 50 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES > 5003 Philosophy > 500311 Philosophical psychology (incl. moral psychology and philosophy of action) @ 25%
SEO Codes:	97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970117 Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences @ 34% 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9504 Religion and Ethics > 950404 Religion and Society @ 33% 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9504 Religion and Ethics > 950499 Religion and Ethics not elsewhere classified @ 33%
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