Religious concept activation attenuates cognitive dissonance reduction in free-choice and induced compliance paradigms

ABSTRACT

Past research suggests that religion imbues people with a sense of certainty – via an increase in personal control, by providing meaning in life, or by activating associated norms. Based on findings suggesting that uncertainty and cognitive dissonance share many underlying features, we investigated whether thinking about religion, either situationally or chronically, buffers against cognitive dissonance. In four methodically diverse studies, we found converging support for this hypothesis. Semantically or symbolically activating Christian religious concepts, as well as being a self-reported believer, attenuated participants’ need to reduce post-decisional dissonance via a spreading of alternatives in a free-choice paradigm (Studies 1, 2, & 4) as well as after counterattitudinal advocacy in an induced compliance paradigm (Study 3). The attenuation of post-decisional dissonance was found for a US American online sample (Studies 1 & 4) and for German university students in a laboratory setting, where the dissonance-inducing decision had factual consequences (Study 2).

KEYWORDS:

• Religion
• cognitive dissonance
• free choice paradigm
• induced compliance paradigm

Data-availability

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/mwk7p.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/mwk7p/.

Notes

1. The materials required to replicate the present studies (in addition to the information provided in the respective methods sections) can be accessed through this registered OSF project: https://osf.io/mwk7p.

2. We did not assess participants’ religious affiliation. Exline et al. (2014) found that among US-based Mechanical Turk users, 54–60% indicate affiliation with a Christian sect, and 30–37% reporting no religious affiliation/atheism/agnosticism.

3. While five participants mentioned they noticed the presence of words related to religion, the church, or Christianity in the anagram task, no participant had any correct assumptions about the purpose of the study.

4. Of the eight participants who failed to follow instructions, six generated arguments against a prohibition, one did not write an essay at all, and one only listed two short arguments instead of writing an essay. Five of them were previously assigned to the religion priming condition, while three were assigned to the control condition. These participants did therefore not engage in behavior that could cause an experience of cognitive dissonance to arise.

5. Of the 62 people in the religion priming condition, 42 mentioned in the debriefing that the word-grid puzzle contained words related to Christianity, religiosity or “the church”. Whether participants noticed this underlying topic (religion mentioned: yes vs. no) was a significant covariate (F(1, 59) = 7.72, p = .007, η _p ² = .12) in the effects of dissonance condition on attitude (in the religion priming condition only). Controlling for this variable still produced the previously reported significant difference between dissonance conditions, F(1, 59) = 11.29, p = .001, η _p ² = 16.

6. We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this interesting idea of an alternative mechanism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthias Forstmann

Matthias Forstmann, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University's Mind and Development Lab. His research primarily focuses on lay theories about the mind, magical thinking, and the effects of psychedelic drugs on human cognition.

Christina Sagioglou

Christina Sagioglou, PhD, is an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her research focuses on the effects of social status and social mobility on social perception, attitudes, and behavior.