“Speak of the Devil… and he Shall Appear”: Religiosity, Unconsciousness, and the Effects of Explicit Priming in the Misperception of Immorality

Tsikandilakis, Myron; Leong, Man Qing; Yu, Zhaoliang; Paterakis, Georgios; Bali, Persefoni; Derrfuss, Jan; Mevel, Pierre Alexis; Milbank, Alison; Tong Mun Wai Tong, Eddie; Madan, Christopher; Mitchell, Peter

Abstract

Psychological theory and research suggest that religious individuals could have differences in the appraisal of immoral behaviours and cognitions compared to non-religious individuals. This effect could occur due to adherence to prescriptive and inviolate deontic religious-moral rules and socio-evolutionary factors, such as increased autonomic nervous system responsivity to indirect threat. The latter thesis has been used to suggest that immoral elicitors could be processed subliminally by religious individuals. In this manuscript, we employed masking to test this hypothesis. We rated and pre-selected IAPS images for moral impropriety. We presented these images masked with and without negatively manipulating a pre-image moral label. We measured detection, moral appraisal and discrimination, and physiological responses. We found that religious individuals experienced higher responsivity to masked immoral images. Bayesian and hit-versus-miss response analyses revealed that the differences in appraisal and physiological responses were reported only for consciously perceived immoral images. Our analysis showed that when a negative moral label was presented, religious individuals experienced the interval following the label as more physiologically arousing and responded with lower specificity for moral discrimination. We propose that religiosity involves higher conscious perceptual and physiological responsivity for discerning moral impropriety but also higher susceptibility for the misperception of immorality.

Citation

Tsikandilakis, M., Leong, M. Q., Yu, Z., Paterakis, G., Bali, P., Derrfuss, J., Mevel, P. A., Milbank, A., Tong Mun Wai Tong, E., Madan, C., & Mitchell, P. (2022). “Speak of the Devil… and he Shall Appear”: Religiosity, Unconsciousness, and the Effects of Explicit Priming in the Misperception of Immorality. Psychological Research, 86(1), 37-65. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01461-7

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 7, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jan 23, 2021
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 24, 2022
• Journal: Psychological Research
• Print ISSN: 0340-0727
• Electronic ISSN: 1430-2772
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 86
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 37-65
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01461-7
• Keywords: Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); Developmental and Educational Psychology; Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; General Medicine
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5125122
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-020-01461-7
• Additional Information: Received: 6 June 2020; Accepted: 7 December 2020; First Online: 23 January 2021; : ; : This work has no conflicts of interest.; : Ethical approval for the current study was granted by the School of Psychology of the University of Nottingham (EAN: s1246). The current work did not include research involving animals. The current work included research with human participants. All participants gave informed consent for participating in the current study. All participants were debriefed after the completion of the study. All participants were provided with the contact details of the researchers, for further correspondence as regards the current study, after the completion of the current study.