Do God Primes Prime God? Converging Evidence Against the Efficacy of Experimental Religious Priming
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study designs: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis
Abstract: How does religion change people? Religious priming has been used to scientifically ask this question for nearly twodecades, linking religious cognition to varied outcomes – especially prosociality. Priming research has proliferatedin the absence of direct evidence that religious priming tools work as implicitly assumed: by activating religiouscognition. Here, we evaluate this assumption. Across a bias-adjusted meta-analysis (k = 66) and two experiments(total N = 2960), we report strong and converging evidence: 1) against the validity of the most commonly used primingmethodology, 2) against even overt primes’ abilities to robustly affect prosocial cognition or behavior, 3) against ameaningful relationship between cognitive activation of religion and prosocial behavior; further, evidence was 4) infavor of even ineffective primes nonetheless inviting participant suspicion. Combined, this suggests that the evidentialstrength of existing priming research is likely overstated, with critical assumptions now contradicted by evidence.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214735988