Previous findings suggest that religion has a specific impact on attentional processes. Here we show that religion also affects action control. Experiment 1 compared Dutch Calvinists and Dutch atheists, matched for age, sex, intelligence, education, and cultural and socio-economic background, and Experiment 2 compared Italian Catholics with matched Italian seculars. As expected, Calvinists showed a smaller and Catholics a larger Simon effect than nonbelievers, while performance of the groups was comparable in the Stop-Signal task. This pattern suggests that religions emphasizing individualism or collectivism affects action control in specific ways, presumably by inducing chronic biases towards a more "exclusive" or "inclusive" style of decision-making. Interestingly, there was no evidence that religious practice affects inhibitory skills.
Religion and action control: Faith-specific modulation of the Simon effect but not Stop-Signal performance / Hommel, B.; Colzato, L.; Scorolli, C.; Borghi, ANNA MARIA; van den Wildenberg, L. P.. - In: COGNITION. - ISSN 0010-0277. - 120:(2011), pp. 177-185. [10.1016/j.cognition.2011.04.003]
Religion and action control: Faith-specific modulation of the Simon effect but not Stop-Signal performance
BORGHI, ANNA MARIA;
2011
Abstract
Previous findings suggest that religion has a specific impact on attentional processes. Here we show that religion also affects action control. Experiment 1 compared Dutch Calvinists and Dutch atheists, matched for age, sex, intelligence, education, and cultural and socio-economic background, and Experiment 2 compared Italian Catholics with matched Italian seculars. As expected, Calvinists showed a smaller and Catholics a larger Simon effect than nonbelievers, while performance of the groups was comparable in the Stop-Signal task. This pattern suggests that religions emphasizing individualism or collectivism affects action control in specific ways, presumably by inducing chronic biases towards a more "exclusive" or "inclusive" style of decision-making. Interestingly, there was no evidence that religious practice affects inhibitory skills.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.