Let God Judge Between Me and Thee: Activating God-Related Concepts Increases Overconfidence in Chinese Han and Bai People

IF 1.7 2区哲学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion Pub Date : 2023-01-19 DOI:10.1080/10508619.2023.2168935

Heng Li

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT Risk compensation theory posits that high-risk environments lead to more cautiousness or conservatism. Previous research has shown that reminders of God’s protection can evoke a strong feeling of safety. Drawing on this literature, we develop a theoretical perspective that activating God-related concepts can boost overconfidence level by cultivating a sense of security. Three studies, spanning diverse populations (Chinese Han and Bai people), multiple methods measuring overconfidence (the peer-comparison problem and the general knowledge test), and multiple manipulations designed to activate God-related concepts (a scrambled-sentence priming task and a reading task), support our theory. In Experiment 1, student participants who had been primed with God concepts displayed a higher level of overconfidence than those primed with neutral concepts. Employing a multiple-item measure gauging people’s overconfidence, Experiment 2 replicated these effects in non-student adults. Experiment 3 found that these effects can generalize to an understudied minority ethnic group of Bai. Importantly, Experiments 1 through 3 provided consistent evidence that the relationship between God-related thoughts and overconfidence was mediated by the sense of security. On the basis of our findings, we propose that the salience of God plays a causal role in shaping the overconfidence heuristic-driven bias.

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让上帝在我和你之间评判：激活与上帝相关的观念增加了中国汉族和白族人的过度自信

风险补偿理论认为，高风险环境会导致更谨慎或更保守。先前的研究表明，提醒人们注意上帝的保护可以唤起强烈的安全感。根据这些文献，我们发展了一种理论观点，即激活与上帝相关的概念可以通过培养安全感来提高过度自信水平。三项研究，跨越不同的人群（中国汉族和白族），测量过度自信的多种方法（同伴比较问题和常识测试），以及旨在激活上帝相关概念的多种操作（扰乱句子启动任务和阅读任务），支持了我们的理论。在实验1中，被上帝概念引导的学生参与者比被中性概念引导的参与者表现出更高程度的过度自信。实验2采用了衡量人们过度自信的多项指标，在非学生成年人中复制了这些影响。实验3发现，这些效应可以推广到研究不足的白族少数民族。重要的是，实验1到3提供了一致的证据，证明与上帝有关的思想和过度自信之间的关系是由安全感介导的。基于我们的发现，我们提出上帝的显著性在形成过度自信启发式驱动的偏见中起着因果作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion Multiple-

CiteScore

4.20

自引率

4.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (IJPR) is devoted to psychological studies of religious processes and phenomena in all religious traditions. This journal provides a means for sustained discussion of psychologically relevant issues that can be examined empirically and concern religion in the most general sense. It presents articles covering a variety of important topics, such as the social psychology of religion, religious development, conversion, religious experience, religion and social attitudes and behavior, religion and mental health, and psychoanalytic and other theoretical interpretations of religion. The journal publishes research reports, brief research reports, commentaries on relevant topical issues, book reviews, and statements addressing articles published in previous issues. The journal may also include a major essay and commentaries, perspective papers of the theory, and articles on the psychology of religion in a specific country.