TY - JOUR
T1 - Measuring supernatural belief implicitly using the Affect Misattribution Procedure
AU - Ross, Robert
AU - Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L.
AU - Gervais, Will
AU - Jong, Jonathan
AU - Lanman, Jonathan
AU - McKay, Ryan
AU - Pennycook, Gordon
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Asking about religious beliefs, or lack thereof, is a sensitive and complex issue. Due to cultural norms, people may be motivated to respond in a socially desirable way. In addition, deliberating about beliefs may yield different responses than intuition-based responses. To develop a better understanding of the relationship between intuitions and self-reported beliefs, we developed a new implicit measure of supernatural belief. Specifically, we adapted the Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) to measure supernatural belief. In a preregistered online study of 404 American participants, we found that the strength of associations between supernatural entities (e.g., god, devil, heaven) and the concept “real” (as opposed to the concept “imaginary”) predicted self-reported supernatural belief and self-reported religious behavior, and these associations were of comparable magnitude to those found in studies where supernatural belief was measured implicitly using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). These results provide provisional evidence that the AMP can be used as an implicit measure of supernatural belief.
AB - Asking about religious beliefs, or lack thereof, is a sensitive and complex issue. Due to cultural norms, people may be motivated to respond in a socially desirable way. In addition, deliberating about beliefs may yield different responses than intuition-based responses. To develop a better understanding of the relationship between intuitions and self-reported beliefs, we developed a new implicit measure of supernatural belief. Specifically, we adapted the Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) to measure supernatural belief. In a preregistered online study of 404 American participants, we found that the strength of associations between supernatural entities (e.g., god, devil, heaven) and the concept “real” (as opposed to the concept “imaginary”) predicted self-reported supernatural belief and self-reported religious behavior, and these associations were of comparable magnitude to those found in studies where supernatural belief was measured implicitly using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). These results provide provisional evidence that the AMP can be used as an implicit measure of supernatural belief.
U2 - 10.1080/2153599X.2019.1619620
DO - 10.1080/2153599X.2019.1619620
M3 - Article
SN - 2153-599X
VL - 10
SP - 393
EP - 406
JO - Religion, Brain & Behavior
JF - Religion, Brain & Behavior
IS - 4
ER -