Roles
Tina M. Toburen: Class of 2008
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2010
Department 1
Psychology
Abstract
Research on the relationship between religiosity and anxiety has been mixed, with some studies revealing a positive relation and other studies revealing a negative relation. The current research used an experimental design, perhaps for the first time, to examine anxiety and task persistence during a stressful situation. Christians and Atheists/Agnostics/Others were primed with God-related or neutral (non-God related) concepts before completing an unsolvable anagram task described as a measure of verbal intelligence. The results revealed that the God-related primes increased both task persistence and anxiousness, which suggests that experimentally induced God-related thoughts caused participants to persist longer on a stressful task, but also to feel more anxious after finishing it. No effect of religious affiliation was found, however, indicating that God-related priming affected Christians and non-Christians in a similar fashion.
Copyright Note
This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
DOI
10.1521/jscp.2010.29.2.127
Recommended Citation
Toburen, Tina and Brian P. Meier. "Priming God-Related Concepts Increases Anxiety and Task Persistence." Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 29.2 (2010), 127-143.
Required Publisher's Statement
Original version available at: http://www.guilford.com/cgi-bin/cartscript.cgi?page=pr/jnsc.htm
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons
Comments
This article is based upon the honors thesis of Tina Toburen while at Gettysburg College.