1. 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). Posttraumatic stress reactions as a disruption in anxiety-buffer functioning: Dissociation and responses to mortality salience as predictors of severity of posttraumatic symptoms. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 3(4), 329.
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp ). New York: Springer-Verlag
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological bulletin, 130(3), 435.
Vail, K. E., Arndt, J., Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2012). The aftermath of destruction: Images of destroyed buildings increase support for war, dogmatism, and death thought accessibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5),
SPSP, January 2017, San Antonio, TX.
Contact: Eleni-Ilianna Mavropoulou,