It was hypothesized that intrinsic religiousness helps to cope with increased salience of terrorism. Intrinsically religious and non-religious participants were told that it is highly probable or highly improbable, respectively, that terrorist attacks will occur in Germany. High probability of terrorism only negatively affected the mood of non-religious participants but not of intrinsically rel...

Although the contribution of immigration and religious switching to the changing religious landscape in Canada seems well established, we lack knowledge on the religious switching of immigrants. In this study we address if and to what extent immigrants to Canada change religion after their arrival. We use data on religious affiliation and other demographic characteristics from the 1981, 1991 an...

An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting (i.e., unbelieving) supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagemen...

As a theologian working in Western Europe, religious plurality is unavoidable for me. It seems that our context can no longer be identified in terms of secularization. Competing worldviews and complementing religious stories dictate the religious landscape (and increasingly so, due to migration and global communication). The religions present in my country, however, are not monolithic and stabl...

Researchers often expose participants to a series of words (e.g., religion, God, faith) to activate religious concepts and observe their subsequent effects on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This research has revealed many important effects of experimentally manipulated religious cognition in domains ranging from prosocial behavior to prejudice. However, it is not exactly clear what...

This study examines if religious participation in China is associated with cognitive functioning among the oldest-old and whether positive psychological feelings and leisure activity engagement explain the association, and gender moderates the association. Logistic regressions were used to analyze the Chinese Healthy Longevity Survey. A significant negative association between religious partici...

Th is article presents a theoretical framework for religiocentrism that is suited to cross-religious comparisons between Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Religiocentrism is defined as the combination of positive attitudes toward the religious ingroup and negative attitudes toward religious outgroup(s). Empirical research proves the relevance of the construct ‘religiocentrism’ among Christian, Mu...