The Implicit Nature of Intrinsic Religious Pursuit

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to demonstrate the implicit (nonconscious) activation and operation of goals related to religious pursuit. Participants focused on either religious successes or religious shortcomings. Moskowitz (2001, 2002) argued that focusing on shortcomings in a goal-relevant domain (in this case, religion) creates a sense of incompleteness that, in turn, activates cognitive processes that seek to compensate for the incompleteness. In Experiment 1, the activation of compensatory processes slowed participants' response times to goal-relevant information on a color-identification task. In Experiment 2, the operation of compensatory processes was manifested when participants spent more time reading a subsequent passage with religious content. The results have implications for the motivational nature of intrinsic religious pursuit.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge and appreciate the contributions of Leigh Ann Morrow and Sara Smith, graduate students at the University of West Alabama. They administered data collection in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively.

Notes

¹Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to evaluate potential effects while maintaining the continuous nature of participants' intrinsic and extrinsic ratings. These analyses did not reveal any additional findings.

²As in Experiment 1, correlation and regression analyses were conducted and did not reveal any additional findings.