Scholars@Duke
Patty Van Cappellen

Patty Van Cappellen

Associate Research Professor in the Social Science Research Institute
Social Science Research Institute

Selected Publications

Using Everyday Prayer to Test Functions of Gratitude in the Context of Religion.

Journal Article Personality & social psychology bulletin · November 2025 For the billions who practice a religion, gratitude is thought to be often expressed toward their God in prayers. We build upon two theoretical frameworks to test the effects of gratitude to God on factors central to maintaining religion: a relationship wi ... Full text Cite

"It's Hard to Shake God's Hand": Gratitude to God Motivates Paying Gratitude Forward.

Journal Article Personality & social psychology bulletin · April 2025 Gratitude is often considered a response to kind acts from others, but growing research suggests it is frequently directed toward God. This study explored how gratitude toward God differs from gratitude toward people. Since God is perceived as all-powerful ... Full text Cite

Religion and human flourishing

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · January 1, 2025 Can religion promote human flourishing? Existing research says yes. However, this work has largely been done within ‘WEIRD’ and Christian contexts. Might the reasons why or the answer be different elsewhere? Here, we outline how religion can contribute to ... Full text Cite

What It Takes to Tutor—A Preregistered Direct Replication of the Scaffolding Experimental Study by D. Wood et al. (1978)

Journal Article Psychology of Religion and Spirituality · January 1, 2025 Although the benefits of in-person religious service attendance are well-documented, the well-being and biopsychosocial effects of virtual worship—more frequent since the COVID-19 pandemic—remain largely unexplored. This study examinestheimpact of attendin ... Full text Cite

Kneel, stand, prostrate: The psychology of prayer postures in three world religions.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2024 Most people practice a religion, often multiple times daily. Among the most visible aspects of these practices are body postures, which according to embodiment theories, likely shape the psychological experience of religion. In a preregistered study, we te ... Full text Cite

Bodily awareness: Religious culture's associations with interoceptive sensibility.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2024 Religions, as cultural systems, influence how people view and attune to their body. This research explores whether individual differences in various dimensions of religiosity are associated with interoceptive sensibility (IS), i.e., one's perceived ability ... Full text Cite

Eternal outgroups: Afterlife beliefs predict prejudice

Journal Article Personality and Individual Differences · November 1, 2023 People express prejudice toward ideologically dissimilar groups. However, little research has explored (a) how specific beliefs, such as afterlife beliefs, relate to prejudice, (b) whether such beliefs can explain the known association between religiosity ... Full text Cite

Meaning Behind the Movement: Attributing Sacred Meaning to Fluid and Nonfluid Arm Movements Increases Self-Transcendent Positive Emotions and Buffers the Effects of Nonfluidity on Positive Emotions

Journal Article Psychology of Religion and Spirituality · August 5, 2023 Sacred meaning is regularly attributed to body movements in a variety of religious and spiritual settings, but studies have yet to disentangle the effects of the sacred meaning attributed to body movements from the effects of body movements themselves. Par ... Full text Cite

Shades of expansiveness: Postural expression of dominance, high-arousal positive affect, and warmth.

Journal Article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · June 2023 In addition to the face, bodily posture plays an important role in communicating affective states. Postural expansion-how much space the body takes up-has been much studied as expressing and signaling dominance and pride. The present research aimed to expa ... Full text Cite

Religion as an Embodied Practice: Documenting the Various Forms, Meanings, and Associated Experience of Christian Prayer Postures

Journal Article Psychology of Religion and Spirituality · May 3, 2023 Religious practices such as worship services are profoundly embodied. Indeed, body postures both express and create the religious experience. While researchers have called for more attention to the corporeal nature of religion, empirical research on this t ... Full text Cite

Bodily feedback: expansive and upward posture facilitates the experience of positive affect.

Journal Article Cognition & emotion · November 2022 Most emotion theories recognise the importance of the body in expressing and constructing emotions. Focusing beyond the face, the present research adds needed empirical data on the effect of static full body postures on positive/negative affect. In Studies ... Full text Cite

Training in Mindfulness or Loving-kindness Meditation Is Associated with Lower Variability in Social Connectedness Across Time

Journal Article Mindfulness · May 1, 2022 Objectives: Research demonstrates that meditation interventions tend to positively influence social well-being. Yet, prior research has exclusively examined meditation in relation to average levels of social outcomes (e.g., social connectedness), despite o ... Full text Cite

Prejudice toward Christians and atheists among members of nonreligious groups: Attitudes, behaviors, and mechanisms

Journal Article Group Processes and Intergroup Relations · January 1, 2022 Much research demonstrates that people high in religiosity tend to be prejudiced against value-threatening groups. Therefore, some researchers have suggested that people who are not religious may be less prejudiced. Are nonreligious people characterized by ... Full text Cite

Emotion Expression in Context: Full Body Postures of Christian Prayer Orientations Compared to Specific Emotions

Journal Article Journal of Nonverbal Behavior · December 1, 2021 For many people, emotions are frequently expressed in the context of communication with their God. The practice of prayer is clearly embodied and affords the study of full body expressions of emotions in a relevant context. Surprisingly uncharacterized in ... Full text Cite

Correction to: Emotion Expression in Context: Full Body Postures of Christian Prayer Orientations Compared to Specific Emotions (Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, (2021), 45, 4, (545-565), 10.1007/s10919-021-00370-6)

Journal Article Journal of Nonverbal Behavior · December 1, 2021 The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. In Table 3 of this article, the data in the column headed ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘Gratitude’ were mistakenly flipped between two columns. The data have now been corrected. The sentence und ... Full text Cite

Upward spirals of positive emotions and religious behaviors.

Journal Article Current opinion in psychology · August 2021 Positive emotions feel good and build psychological, social, and biological resources (Broaden-and-Build Theory, Fredrickson, 1998, 2013). People who identify as religious or spiritual value them and report feeling them frequently. They are also prevalent ... Full text Cite

Understanding Engagement in and Affective Experiences During Physical Activity: The Role of Meditation Interventions.

Journal Article Psychosomatic medicine · July 2021 ObjectiveMeditation interventions promote an array of well-being outcomes. However, the way in which these interventions promote beneficial outcomes is less clear. Here, we expanded on prior work by examining the influence of mindfulness and lovin ... Full text Cite

Same-day, cross-day, and upward spiral relations between positive affect and positive health behaviours.

Journal Article Psychology & health · April 2021 ObjectiveThis project investigated same-day and lagged (i.e., from one day to the next) associations between daily positive affect and three distinct positive health behaviours: physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake, and meditation. Cross- ... Full text Cite

A new micro-intervention to increase the enjoyment and continued practice of meditation.

Journal Article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · December 2020 Featured Publication New health behaviors are difficult to maintain and meditation is no different. We tested two key pathways of the upward spiral theory of lifestyle change (Fredrickson, 2013), which identifies positive emotions as critical ingredients for the maintenance of ... Full text Cite

It's the heart that matters: The relationships among cognitive mentalizing ability, emotional empathy, and religiosity

Journal Article Personality and Individual Differences · July 15, 2020 Mentalizing ability, i.e., an ability to attribute mental states to other beings, has been regarded as a chief cognitive predisposition that allows people to believe in supernatural beings. However, research on mentalizing ability and religiosity is incons ... Full text Cite

The emotion of joy: commentary on Johnson

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · January 2, 2020 In this contribution, I push for a deeper understanding of the emotion of joy as compared to happiness and to other discrete positive emotions, by specifying its appraisals and functions. I suggest that joy connects us to our core identity, values, and pri ... Full text Cite

Development of Trait Emotional Intelligence in Response to Childbirth: A Longitudinal Couple Perspective.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychiatry · January 2020 The aim of the current paper was to investigate the influence of childbirth on parents' trait emotional intelligence (EI). A three-wave longitudinal research program (during the second trimester of pregnancy, at 6 months postpartum, and at 1 year postpartu ... Full text Cite

Do Contemplative Moments Matter? Effects of Informal Meditation on Emotions and Perceived Social Integration

Journal Article Mindfulness · September 1, 2019 Objectives: In contrast to formal meditation, which involves setting aside other activities to engage in contemplative practice, informal meditation can happen at any moment within the flow of daily activities. Whether informal meditation practice improves ... Full text Cite

Positive affective processes underlie positive health behaviour change.

Journal Article Psychology & health · January 2018 Featured Publication Positive health behaviours such as physical activity can prevent or reverse many chronic conditions, yet a majority of people fall short of leading a healthy lifestyle. Recent discoveries in affective science point to promising approaches to circumvent bar ... Full text Cite

Positive Emotion Correlates of Meditation Practice: A Comparison of Mindfulness Meditation and Loving-kindness Meditation.

Journal Article Mindfulness · December 2017 The purpose of this study was to uncover the day-to-day emotional profiles and dose-response relations, both within-persons and between-persons, associated with initiating one of two meditation practices, either mindfulness meditation or loving-kindness me ... Full text Cite

Rethinking self-transcendent positive emotions and religion: Insights from psychological and biblical research.

Journal Article Psychology of Religion and Spirituality · August 1, 2017 At the heart of many religious and spiritual traditions is the aspiration to transcend the self to achieve a sense of connectedness with the world and/or with a Higher Power and to serve the greater good. Recent research suggests that the emergence of such ... Full text Cite

Religiosity and the Motivation for Social Affiliation.

Journal Article Personality and individual differences · July 2017 Although universal, the motivation to affiliate can vary as a function of individual differences and of the characteristics of the target. Three studies explored the extent to which religious beliefs and identity are related to social affiliation motivatio ... Full text Open Access Cite

Effects of oxytocin administration on spirituality and emotional responses to meditation.

Journal Article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · October 2016 The oxytocin (OT) system, critically involved in social bonding, may also impinge on spirituality, which is the belief in a meaningful life imbued with a sense of connection to a Higher Power and/or the world. Midlife male participants (N = 83) were random ... Full text Cite

Good day for Leos: Horoscope's influence on perception, cognitive performances, and creativity

Journal Article Personality and Individual Differences · October 1, 2016 Do people treat horoscopes as mere entertainment, or does reading horoscopes have more substantial consequences? Building upon research on the expectancy effect as well as on literature highlighting the influence of astrology on individuals, we hypothesize ... Full text Cite

Religion and Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Positive Emotions

Journal Article Journal of Happiness Studies · April 1, 2016 Research has consistently shown that endorsing a religion or spirituality is to some extent related to one’s well-being. Common studied explanations tap into the social and cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality. The present research aims at unders ... Full text Cite

Religiosity and Prosocial Behavior Among Churchgoers: Exploring Underlying Mechanisms

Journal Article International Journal for the Psychology of Religion · January 2, 2016 Research has shown that religious beliefs and practices are related, to some extent, to prosocial behaviors, but less is known about why it is so. In addition, participating in the traditional Christian ritual (Sunday Mass) may be particularly powerful in ... Full text Cite

Mark 15,34 and the real reader: the Results of an empirical survey

Journal Article Ephemerides Theologica Lovanienses · 2015 Cite

Positive emotions and self-transcendence

Chapter · July 24, 2013 This volume reviews the accumulated research and theory on the major aspects of personality and social psychology as applied to religion. ... Cite

Self-transcendent positive emotions increase spirituality through basic world assumptions.

Journal Article Cognition & emotion · January 2013 Featured Publication Spirituality has mostly been studied in psychology as implied in the process of overcoming adversity, being triggered by negative experiences, and providing positive outcomes. By reversing this pathway, we investigated whether spirituality may also be trig ... Full text Cite

Pride in the Psalms or the paradox of self-glorification in God

Journal Article Revue Theologique De Louvain · October 18, 2012 This article studies the emotion of pride in the Book of Psalms. In order to better understand the different types and functions of pride, it makes reference to the knowledge which has been accumulated in psychology concerning this emotion. Then, using a « ... Full text Cite

Awe activates religious and spiritual feelings and behavioral intentions

Journal Article Psychology of Religion and Spirituality · August 1, 2012 In two experiments, we investigated the role of awe in activating the association between religiosity/spirituality and related feelings and behavioral intentions. In Experiment 1, the induction of awe (through the recall of a relevant event), but not the i ... Full text Cite

A collective ritual: Analysis of 1 Ch 15-16 depending on the model of E. Durkheim

Journal Article Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament · October 1, 2011 Full text Cite

Beyond mere compliance to authoritative figures: Religious priming increases conformity to informational influence among submissive people

Journal Article International Journal for the Psychology of Religion · April 1, 2011 Featured Publication Religious priming activates submissive thoughts and facilitates compliance to authority's request for revenge among individuals with high dispositional submissiveness (Saroglou, Corneille, & Van Cappellen, 2009). The present experiment examines another key ... Full text Cite

Speak, lord, your servant is listening: Religious priming activates submissive thoughts and behaviors

Journal Article International Journal for the Psychology of Religion · July 1, 2009 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 E ... Full text Cite