Speak, lord, your servant is listening: Religious priming activates submissive thoughts and behaviors
According to many theoretical perspectives, religion is positively associated with submission and conformity. However, no study to date provided experimental evidence for this hypothesis. We did so in two experiments that relied on priming procedures. In Experiment 1, participants were tested for the strength of their religion-submission associations by using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 2, participants were primed with either religious or neutral concepts and were invited or not by the experimenter to take revenge on an individual who had allegedly criticized them. Both studies provided evidence for the expected religion-submission association, although the effects were limited to participants scoring high in personal submissiveness. Among these individuals, religious priming increased the accessibility of submission-related concepts (Experiment 1) and the acceptance of a morally problematic request for revenge (Experiment 2). Discussion focuses on questions for future research and implications for our understanding of religion's role in morality and interpersonal relations. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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- Social Psychology
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
- 1701 Psychology
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Social Psychology
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
- 1701 Psychology