Taking a Leap of Faith: Reminders of God Lead to Greater Risk Taking

Abstract

Religion is a fundamental human concern. Recent psychological models of religion suggest that religious beliefs provide an external form of control. Independently, other research has found that increases in a sense of psychological control leads people to adopt riskier strategies. Hence, I hypothesized that if so, reminders of God would predict greater risk taking behavior. In three studies, I manipulated reminders of God using various means and found that such reminders lead people to take greater risks, as though people were literally ?taking a leap of faith.? My results are hence consistent with psychological models of religion but seem to contradict some survey research that has found more religious people to be less risk seeking. This inconsistency is addressed in the third study by looking at how religion, morality, norms, and risk taking are related. Implications to a relational schema approach to study the effects of God primes are discussed. In addition, the implications of this project to the religious landscape of Singapore are mentioned.