Yes, Jesus loves me! Mortality salience increases positivity in implicit and explicit images of Christ

ABSTRACT

The present research, utilising a terror management theory perspective, examined the effects of death awareness on Christians’ explicit and implicit image of Jesus. Following exposure to mortality salience, participants were asked to complete a reverse correlation task (Study 1) or a forensic sketch task (Study 2) in an attempt to create an image of Christ. All composites were coded on multiple emotional dimensions (i.e., disgust, contempt, neutrality, happiness, fear, sadness, anger, & surprise). Across studies, the results revealed that participants primed with death created more overtly positive images of Jesus (i.e., less implicit anger, contempt, disgust; more happiness; greater explicit contempt). These findings suggest that a benevolent Christ serves as part of Christians’ religious worldviews. A positive Jesus may thus function by protecting individuals against existential anxieties associated with the awareness of death.

KEYWORDS:

• Terror management theory
• implicit images
• forensic sketch

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These sample characteristics tend to be quite common within the psychology of religion as religious affiliated women tend to outnumber men (Hood et al., 2018). Nevertheless, additional analyses were conducted for each study that examined participant sex as a potential moderator or main effect. Sex was non-significant (p’s > .10) and zero was included in the 95% confidence intervals for all main effects and interactions.

2 Each experimenter (N = 3) was trained to create images using several practice trials. Experimenters yielded greater than 90% correspondence between practice images. Additional analyses were conducted that included the experimenter as a potential moderator or main effect. Experimenter was non-significant (p’s > .10) and zero was included in the 95% confidence intervals for all main effects and interactions.