title: Religious Priming: A Meta-Analysis With a Focus on Prosociality.
abstract: Priming has emerged as a valuable tool within the psychological study of religion, allowing for tests of religion's causal effect on a number of psychological outcomes, such as prosocial behavior. As the literature has grown, questions about the reliability and boundary conditions of religious priming have arisen. We use a combination of traditional effect-size analyses, p-curve analyses, and adjustments for publication bias to evaluate the robustness of four types of religious priming (Analyses 1-3), review the empirical evidence for religion's effect specifically on prosocial behavior (Analyses 4-5), and test whether religious-priming effects generalize to individuals who report little or no religiosity (Analyses 6-7). Results across 93 studies and 11,653 participants show that religious priming has robust effects across a variety of outcome measures-prosocial measures included. Religious priming does not, however, reliably affect non-religious participants-suggesting that priming depends on the cognitive activation of culturally transmitted religious beliefs.
authors: University of Oregon, Eugene, USA shariff@uoregon.edu.
authors: Azim F
authors: AF
authors: Shariff
authors: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
authors: Aiyana K
authors: AK
authors: Willard
authors: University of Oregon, Eugene, USA.
authors: Teresa
authors: T
authors: Andersen
authors: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
authors: Ara
authors: A
authors: Norenzayan
mesh_terms: D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D012067:Religion; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D060865:Repetition Priming; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: helping/prosocial behavior; morality; priming; religion; research methods