Citation

Rounding K, Lee A, Jacobson JA, Ji LJ. Psychol. Sci. 2012; 23(6): 635-642.

Affiliation

Queen's University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797611431987

PMID

22555969

Abstract

Researchers have proposed that the emergence of religion was a cultural adaptation necessary for promoting self-control. Self-control, in turn, may serve as a psychological pillar supporting a myriad of adaptive psychological and behavioral tendencies. If this proposal is true, then subtle reminders of religious concepts should result in higher levels of self-control. In a series of four experiments, we consistently found that when religious themes were made implicitly salient, people exercised greater self-control, which, in turn, augmented their ability to make decisions in a number of behavioral domains that are theoretically relevant to both major religions and humans' evolutionary success. Furthermore, when self-control resources were minimized, making it difficult for people to exercise restraint on future unrelated self-control tasks, we found that implicit reminders of religious concepts refueled people's ability to exercise self-control. Moreover, compared with morality- or death-related concepts, religion had a unique influence on self-control.

Language: en