Patty Van Cappellen

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 religions role in morality and interpersonal relations.

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

Religious priming activates submissive thoughts and facilitates compliance to authoritys request for revenge among individuals with high dispositional submissiveness (Saroglou, Corneille, & Van Cappellen, 2009). The present experiment examines another key social influence issue: the effect of religious priming on informational conformity. Participants primed with subtle religious or control cues were asked to complete a numeric estimation task. In this task, they were left free to use or disregard numeric estimates allegedly provided by peers for reporting their own numeric decision. Results revealed that participants assimilated their estimates to that of their peers more after religious than control priming, at least for participants scoring higher on dispositional submissiveness. This finding adds to current research concerned with the impact of religious priming in social cognition and behavior.

Religiosity and prosocial behavior among churchgoers: Exploring underlying mechanisms

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 eliciting prosocial behavior among believers. The present study explores the aspects of the Sunday Mass that may be involved in the activation of religious prosociality. The social, emotional, and cognitive aspects of the Mass were concurrently assessed among churchgoers (n = 548) across 20 different parishes. Prosociality was measured by looking at spontaneous intention to share a hypothetical lottery prize. Results showed that a positive relation found between religion and prosociality was mediated by the social aspect of the Mass. Additional analyses revealed that this social aspect also induced the emotion of love, which in turn promoted prosociality.

Positive affective processes underlie positive health behaviour change

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 barriers to lifestyle change. Here, we present a new theoretical framework that integrates scientific knowledge about positive affect with that on implicit processes. The upward spiral theory of lifestyle change explains how positive affect can facilitate long-term adherence to positive health behaviours. The inner loop of this spiral model identifies nonconscious motives as a central mechanism of behavioural maintenance. Positive affect experienced during health behaviours increases incentive salience for cues associated with those behaviours, which in turn, implicitly guides attention and the everyday decisions to repeat those behaviours. The outer loop represents the evidence-backed claim, based on Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory, that positive affect builds a suite of endogenous resources, which may in turn amplify the positive affect experienced during positive health behaviours and strengthen the nonconscious motives. We offer published and preliminary evidence in favour of the theory, contrast it to other dominant theories of health behaviour change, and highlight attendant implications for interventions that merit testing.

Religiosity and the motivation for social affiliation

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 motivation. Because most religions advocate affiliation and provide opportunities for frequent experiences of affiliation, we reasoned that religious people might show greater affiliation motivation in everyday attitudes and behaviors. We found that religiosity was positively related to implicit and behavioral measures of general social affiliation (Studies 1 and 2). However, manipulating the identity of the affiliation target revealed that when affiliating might not lead to positive outcomes, the relation between religiosity and social affiliation disappeared (but did not reverse). In Studies 2 and 3, when the target of the affiliation was explicitly identified as a member of a threatening out-group (atheist), religiosity did not predict affiliation behaviors. We discuss the mechanisms by which religiosity motivates and constrains social affiliation and the potential implications for social influence and intergroup processes.

La fierté dans les Psaumes ou le paradoxe de la glorification de soi en Dieu

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 «narrative» analysis of certain Psalms, the similarities and specificities of the experience of pride in these poems are highlighted. It emerges how an emotion which, more than any other, is characterized by the focalisation on the self and the glorification of the self is able, or unable, to open up to the recognition of God. This allows one to overcome the unique conception of pride as an undesirable emotion (hubris) and to take into account the cases where pride is the path to personal and community fulfilment and to fulfilment in the relationship with God.