Priming and assimilation effects in the automatic activation of religious schema

The purpose of the present two experiments was to examine priming and assimilation effects of stored mental representations of religious constructs using two different tasks that activate self-concept. In the first experiment, participants were first primed with a religious exemplar (Jesus) or a rel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology of religion and spirituality 2011-11, Vol.3 (4), p.308-319
Main Authors: Walker, Whitney L., Diliberto-Macaluso, Kristen A., Altarriba, Jeanette
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assimilation (Cognitive Process)
Emotional States
Female
Human
Male
Priming
Religion
Religious Beliefs
Schema
Self-Concept
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Summary:The purpose of the present two experiments was to examine priming and assimilation effects of stored mental representations of religious constructs using two different tasks that activate self-concept. In the first experiment, participants were first primed with a religious exemplar (Jesus) or a religious stereotype (Christian). Next, participants responded using a lexical-decision task to word and nonword targets that were positively valenced emotion-laden religious targets, negatively valenced emotion-laden religious targets, sacred religious targets, and neutral (nonreligious) targets preceded by either self-primes or control primes. Participants in the exemplar condition exhibited assimilation effects to self-primes whereas individuals in the stereotype condition exhibited contrast effects to self-primes. These effects were independent of target type. Our second experiment was conducted to demonstrate priming and assimilation effects on participants' subsequent mood state using a location task. We found that individuals who were implicitly primed with negatively valenced targets exhibited higher levels of depression than individuals primed with the other target types. We also found strong correlations in our sample between measures of religious orientation and religiosity; however, these variables did not correlate with either reaction time (Experiment 1) or mood state (Experiment 2). Results are interpreted with respect to Active-Self theory and research in social cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
ISSN:1941-1022
1943-1562
DOI:10.1037/a0022960