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...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs: Rihs, Michael (Auteur) ; Mast, Fred 1964- (Auteur) ; Hartmann, Matthias (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Routledge 2022
Dans: Religion, brain & behavior
Année: 2022, Volume: 12, Numéro: 3, Pages: 271-283
Sujets non-standardisés:B implicit religiosity
B Conceptual metaphor theory
B Terror Management Theory
B mortality salience
B implicit association
Accès en ligne: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Résumé: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
Contient:Enthalten in: Religion, brain & behavior
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2035800