Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-7-2019
Department 1
Psychology
Abstract
Metaphors linking the heart to warm intuition and the head to cold rationality may capture important differences between people because some locate the self in the heart and others locate the self in the head. Five studies (total N = 2575) link these individual differences to religious beliefs. Study 1 found that religious beliefs were stronger among heart-locators than head-locators. Studies 2 and 3 replicated this relationship in more diverse samples. Studies 4 and 5 focused on questions of mediation. Heart-locators believed in God to a greater extent partly because of empathy-related processes (Study 4) and partly because they tended to think in less analytic terms (Study 5). These studies extend our knowledge of how metaphors interact with personality processes.
Copyright Note
This is the author'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
10.1080/15298868.2019.1651389
ISBN/ISSN
1529-8868
Version
Post-Print
Recommended Citation
Fetterman, Adam K., Jacob Juhl, Brian P. Meier, Andrew Abeyta, Clay Routledge, and Michael D. Robinson. “The Path to God Is through the Heart: Metaphoric Self-Location as a Predictor of Religiosity.” Self and Identity 19, no. 6 (2019): 650–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2019.1651389.
Required Publisher's Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Self and Identity on August 7, 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15298868.2019.1651389.
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Religion Commons