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

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.