The effects of mortality salience and analytic thinking on strength of religious faith Eleni-Ilianna Mavropoulou & Kenneth E. Vail III Cleveland State University Psychology Department Introduction Terror Management Theory (TMT) TMT (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) holds that a system emerged to help people manage that awareness of mortality by: a) striving for a sense of personal value (i.e., self-esteem) within b) a symbolically permanent cultural worldview. Thus, TMT argues that people can manage the awareness of mortality by maintaining the perception that one is an object of value in a seemingly permanent system of meaning.  Religious concepts address the problem of mortality in a unique way, offering promises of supernatural immortality based on the idea that people have a soul that will continue to exist beyond physical death. Intuitive vs. Reflective/critical thinking According to the dual-process theory, people have two types of processes, intuitive vs. reflective (Evans, 2008). Intuitive processes are quick, automatic, and implicit. Reflective processes are slow, deliberate, explicit and general Studies show that religious beliefs are favored more by intuitive than reflective individuals (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). Losing faith: Over-riding intuition After MS, atheists activate religious intuition (Jong et al., 2012) but manage the awareness of mortality by abstaining from or rejecting religious belief (Jong et al., 2012; Vail et al., 2012) Thus, atheists may use analytic thinking to over-ride intuition (Vail & Soenke, 2016). Religious, such as Christians in the US context, may similarly be able to over- ride religious intuitions via analytic (vs. intuitive) style thinking Hypothesis Religious participants reminded of death will increase their religious beliefs, unless primed to engage in analytic style thinking. Method Participants A sample of 154 religious participants were recruited (131 Christian, 18 Muslim, 3 Jewish, 2 Hindu), and completed the following: mortality salience manipulation, delay and distraction, analytic thinking manipulation, and then the religious faith measurement. Mortality Salience The MS condition will ask participants to “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you” and “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think happens to you as you physically die.” The control condition will ask participants to “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of experiencing dental pain arouses in you” and “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you experience dental pain.” (Rosenblatt et al., 1989). Delay and distraction 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and a word-search distraction will be given to provide the necessary delay in order to observe distal terror management effects (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). Analytic thinking After the delay and distraction, participants will be given a “verbal fluency” task in which they will receive ten sets of five words. For each set, they will be asked to drop one word and rearrange the remaining words to form a sentence that makes sense. In the analytic condition, five of these words sets will contain target words related to analytic thinking such as think, reason, analyze, ponder and rational. While in the Control condition, words will be unrelated to any coherent concept. Religiosity Following previous research, to measure the religiosity of the participants we used an 8-item Likert-type scale asking items such as “I will ultimately be with God or in harmony with some higher principle of the universe” etc. (1 = Strongly disagree, 10 Strongly agree). Results The data were analyzed using a 2 (MS vs not) x 2 (prime: analytic thinking vs control) ANOVA, and the following data patterns were observed: Main effect of MS: F(1, 150) = 2.48, p = .12 Main effect of Analytic Thinking Prime: F(1, 150) = 3.50, p = .06 Interaction effect: F(1, 150) = 3.75, p = .05 Key pairwise comparisons: In neutral prime condition: MS boosted religious faith, t(74) = 2.45, p = 02. In analytic prime condition: MS had no effect on expressed religious faith, t(78) = -.25, p = 80. Discussion In the control condition, MS increased religious faith In the analytic thinking condition, MS did not increase religious faith These findings are consistent with the idea that existential motivation for religious faith relies on intuitive processing and is potentially derailed by deeper, more analytic processing. References Abdollahi, A., Pyszczynski, T., Maxfield, M., & Luszczysnka, A. (2011). 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Contact: Eleni-Ilianna Mavropoulou, Email: e.mavropoulou@vikes.csuohio.edu