Rihs, Michael; Mast, Fred; Hartmann, Matthias (2022). God is up and devil is down: mortality salience increases implicit spatial-religious associations. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 12 (3), pp. 271-283. 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2035800

Text God_is_up_and_devil_is_down_mortality_salience_increases_implicit_spatial_religious_associations.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (1MB)

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.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

0 since deposited on 17 Apr 2023
0 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item