God is up and devil is down: mortality salience increases implicit spatial-religious associations

Most Christians in Western cultures associate God with upper space and devil with lower space. Measuring this spatial association captures the implicit metaphorical representations of religious concepts. Previous studies have shown that implicit measurements of the belief in God increase when people...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:  
Bibliographische Detailangaben
VerfasserInnen: Rihs, Michael (VerfasserIn) ; Mast, Fred 1964- (VerfasserIn) ; Hartmann, Matthias (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Lade...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Veröffentlicht: Routledge 2022
In: Religion, brain & behavior
Jahr: 2022, Band: 12, Heft: 3, Seiten: 271-283
weitere Schlagwörter:B implicit religiosity
B Conceptual metaphor theory
B Terror Management Theory
B mortality salience
B implicit association
Online Zugang: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Most Christians in Western cultures associate God with upper space and devil with lower space. Measuring this spatial association captures the implicit metaphorical representations of religious concepts. Previous studies have shown that implicit measurements of the belief in God increase when people are confronted with their own mortality. Here we investigated the effect of mortality salience on implicit metaphorical representations of religiosity. Using a repeated measurement design, we found that implicit associations between God-up and devil-down increase when people think about their own death, but not when they think about a tooth treatment (control condition). The effect was moderated by self-esteem; only people with low and medium self-esteem were influenced by mortality salience. Our results show that mortality salience automatically activates religious contents and their cognitive representations that embody these abstract contents.
ISSN:2153-5981
Enthält:Enthalten in: Religion, brain & behavior
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2035800