Are the Highly Religious Better at Resisting Temptation?

Indianapolis, IN

Prior research has indicated that religiosity and ability to self-regulate are positively associated, but this relationship has rarely been addressed experimentally. To investigate whether and under what conditions higher religiosity may result in greater self-regulation, participants ranging in level of religiosity will undertake a task requiring self-control (i.e., they will be asked to resist the temptation of looking at their cell phone). Before doing so, half of the participants will perform a self-regulatory resource depleting task, whereas the other half will not. Successfully resisting the temptation to look at their cell phone will constitute the study’s primary dependent variable. We expect that level of religiosity will interact with level of self-regulatory resources such that when participants have not been depleted, level of religiosity will be unrelated to resisting temptation. However, when participants’ self-regulatory resources have first been depleted, participants high in religiosity are expected to resist temptation more effectively. Data collection is under way, and the final results will be reported at the Undergraduate Research Conference.