Self-Regulation in the Face of Temptation: The Impact of Religiosity

Indianapolis, IN

Prior work has indicated that people who are highly religious are better able to self-regulate (i.e., exert self-control) under certain circumstances. For example, they are more likely to persist at a demanding task relative to the less religious, but only if they have first exerted a lot of self-control on an earlier task. The current study will examine if this effect generalizes to situations involving temptation, which frequently require self-control. Participants will be brought into a laboratory setting and randomly assigned to either squeeze a handgrip (a classic manipulation used to drain self-control resources) or not. They will then be asked to sit quietly in a room for ten minutes without using their cell-phone, a situation involving resisting temptation for most individuals. We predict that when first drained of self-control resources, highly religious individuals will be better able to resist using their cellphones relative to less religious individuals.