RELIGIOSITY AND SENSITIVTY TO MORAL IMPROPRIETY

Abstract

Existing research on religion and morality has predominantly focused on the differences in explicit moral cognitive processes between religious and non-religious individuals. However, drawing from behavioural immune system theories, we propose that religious individuals may additionally display higher perceptual and affective sensitivity towards immoral elicitors compared to non-religious individuals. The present study tested these hypotheses and explored the effects of these automatic processes on moral judgement. Religious (n = 58) and non-religious participants (n = 58) were presented with backward masked morally improper and neutral images. Detection performance, heart rate and impropriety ratings were measured. Heart-rate responses to improper images were additionally analysed according to hits and misses to explore physiological sensitivity to improper images that were not consciously perceived. The results demonstrated that religious individuals exhibited higher heart-rate arousal towards improper images as compared to non-religious individuals, and this effect was due to conscious perception. No group differences were found for perceptual sensitivity and impropriety ratings. These findings suggest that religiosity could involve higher conscious physiological sensitivity to impropriety.