Past Its Prime? A Methodological Overview and Critique of Religious Priming Research in Social Psychology

Social psychologists have frequently used priming methodologies to explore how religion can impact behaviour. Despite this, no consensus currently exists on whether religious priming effects are replicable or consistently observed across a range of spiritual beliefs. Moreover, mixed evidence highlights possible methodological shortcomings within the priming literature as well as theoretical ambiguity regarding the contents of different primes. The current article examines four types of religious priming methodologies that are frequently used in social-psychological research (explicit, implicit, subliminal, and contextual) and critically inspects the current landscape of the religious priming literature. We highlight theoretical issues and suggest methodological improvements that should facilitate a clearer understanding of when and how religion influences human behaviour.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion

• Publication date

  2020-08-24

• Fields of study

  Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1558/jcsr.38411
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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