The Effect of Supernatural Priming on Cheating Behaviour

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The text is clearly structured and written. The finding of no difference between priming by God or “ghost” is interesting but unsurprising. The finding of no difference between explicit believers and explicit non-believers is more interesting.

In the discussion, I expected more attempt to explain the contradictions in the literature with deeper analysis. Which kinds of behavior are more likely to be moderated by explicit religious belief? Can anything general be said about that? What might be expected theoretically and what is found empirically? Surely there is more to the following than mere methodological differences?

“No moderation effects of the belief in supernatural agents have been found in other behaviours (rather than cheating) such as submissive behaviour (Saroglou et al., 2009), punishment, (McKay, Efferson, & Fehr, 2010), and spatial-attention performance (Chasteen et al., 2010). In contrast, other research has found a significant moderating effect of supernatural agent belief in prosocial behaviours (Lin et al., 2016), self-judgment (Baldwin et al., 1990), moral dilemmas (Carpenter & Marshall, 2009), personal agency (Dijksterhuis et al., 2008), neurophysiological responses (Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010), and creation of humour (Saroglou & Jaspard, 2001).”

Given that so much research has already been published on this question, the authors really should move beyond current ways of thinking, considering different possible explanations and comparing them.

The following paragraph should lead to an explanation of how the present authors operationalized religiosity, but I missed that connection.

“One possible reason for such inconsistent findings could be explained by the lack of consensus on the operationalisation of supernatural agent belief (McKay & Dennett, 2009). For instance, some researchers treated supernatural agent belief in terms of intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012), others viewed belief of supernatural agents as spiritual awareness (Pichon et al., 2007). Further, another group of researchers measured supernatural agent belief in terms of observed religion participation (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007), or belief in the existence of God (Lin et al., 2016), or perceived importance of religion (Saroglou et al., 2009). Hence, it is unclear which form of supernatural agent belief conceptualisation would moderate the effects of supernatural priming on cheating.”

So: why did the present authors choose their operationalization? “To operationalize supernatural agent belief, we asked participants if they believed the existence of God and ghosts; hence, only participants who believed in the existence of God and ghost would be considered as supernatural-agents believers.” Why is this approach better or more appropriate than the other approaches? Why did the authors not compare different approaches, if this is such an important issue?

The following suggests that the results of this study are only valid for participants living in Singapore. If so, that should be stated in the abstract and discussed in the conclusion. Otherwise, the group from Singapore should be compared with a group from another country for which there is reason to believe that there is very little such so-called “superstitious belief”. That could be done relatively easily and the paper resubmitted.

“However, we predicted that nonbelievers would be affected by supernatural priming in a society like Singapore. Singapore is a multi-religious society, rich in folklore stories and superstition about the existence of ghosts and spirits, and wherein popular traditions are well-known by the population and overtly celebrated by many (e.g., the Hungry Ghost festival, in which believers would offer paper-money and other gifts to the spirits). As such, the concepts of God and ghost may prime individuals regardless their reported belief in the existence of God or ghosts.”

From the method section of Experiment 1: the following instruction is intended to allow participants to cheat while encouraging them not to. As a participant I would have been quite unsure what was expected of me. I would have wondered why the experimenter was making people participate in a such a shabby experiment and would therefore not have taken it very seriously. Perhaps the description is incomplete? What is missing here is reference to literature about the methods of comparable studies: other possible ways of allowing a participant to cheat while encouraging them not to do so. Surely the results depend on how the cheating option is set up and presented.

“The experimenter also informed the participants that the correct answer to each operation would pop-up on the screen due to a programming glitch, but they could press the spacebar to stop the answers to appear. The experimenter continued to say that it would be impossible to know whether they had really pressed the spacebar or not, so it would really be up to them if they wanted to cheat or not.”

The method for Experiment 2 that allowed for cheating was more appropriate.

Regarding the main conclusion, the lack of a moderating effect of supernatural agent belief suggests that non-believers actually do believe in supernatural agency or fear divine punishment. Does that mean this kind of belief is innate or is it a human cultural universal? More discussion and speculation about possible explanations for the finding would be appropriate.

Perhaps the last sentence of the abstract is misleading: “The results suggested the mental activation of supernatural agents reduce cheating regardless of believing in their existence.” The authors should clarify the distinction between implicit and explicit belief in this case. The findings can be interpreted as evidence that those who claim not to believe in the existence of supernatural agents actually do believe in them, i.e. explicit non-believers actually believe implicitly. This terminology could be defined and used. But there was no test for implicit belief in this study (apart from the study itself which could be defined as a test of implicit belief). Also, literature of the following kind could be incorporated:

Pirutinsky, S., Siev, J., & Rosmarin, D. H. (2015). Scrupulosity and implicit and explicit beliefs about God. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 6, 33-38.

Jong, J., Halberstadt, J., & Bluemke, M. (2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5), 983-989.

Author Response

We have addressed the queries (highlighted and color-coded) and made the necessary changes in the manuscript. Please see the list of changes/responses to the comments:

 

Reviewer #1: The text is clearly structured and written. The finding of no difference between priming by God or “ghost” is interesting but unsurprising. The finding of no difference between explicit believers and explicit non-believers is more interesting.

[Reviewer #1: Point 1] In the discussion, I expected more attempt to explain the contradictions in the literature with deeper analysis. Which kinds of behavior are more likely to be moderated by explicit religious belief? Can anything general be said about that? What might be expected theoretically and what is found empirically? Surely there is more to the following than mere methodological differences?

“No moderation effects of the belief in supernatural agents have been found in other behaviours (rather than cheating) such as submissive behaviour (Saroglou et al., 2009), punishment, (McKay et. al., 2010), and spatial-attention performance (Chasteen et al., 2010). In contrast, other research has found a significant moderating effect of supernatural agent belief in prosocial behaviours (Lin et al., 2016), self-judgment (Baldwin et al., 1990), moral dilemmas (Carpenter & Marshall, 2009), personal agency (Dijksterhuis et al., 2008), neurophysiological responses (Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010), and creation of humour (Saroglou & Jaspard, 2001).”

Given that so much research has already been published on this question, the authors really should move beyond current ways of thinking, considering different possible explanations and comparing them.

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 1] We thank Reviewer #1’s detailed comments and appreciated the feedback on the abovementioned issues. We have revised the discussion section and linked the discussion with dual process theory. In the revised manuscript, we discussed that perhaps those participants who claimed not to believe in the existence of supernatural agents explicitly, but they actually believed in them implicitly.

[Reviewer #1: Point 2] The following paragraph should lead to an explanation of how the present authors operationalized religiosity, but I missed that connection.

“One possible reason for such inconsistent findings could be explained by the lack of consensus on the operationalisation of supernatural agent belief (McKay & Dennett, 2009). For instance, some researchers treated supernatural agent belief in terms of intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012), others viewed belief of supernatural agents as spiritual awareness (Pichon et al., 2007). Further, another group of researchers measured supernatural agent belief in terms of observed religion participation (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007), or belief in the existence of God (Lin et al., 2016), or perceived importance of religion (Saroglou et al., 2009). Hence, it is unclear which form of supernatural agent belief conceptualisation would moderate the effects of supernatural priming on cheating.”

So: why did the present authors choose their operationalization? “To operationalize supernatural agent belief, we asked participants if they believed the existence of God and ghosts; hence, only participants who believed in the existence of God and ghost would be considered as supernatural-agents believers.” Why is this approach better or more appropriate than the other approaches? Why did the authors not compare different approaches, if this is such an important issue?

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 2] We decided to simply ask the participants if they believe in God (i.e., Yes or No) because this method seemed to be one of the most direct way to examine an individual’s supernatural belief and it has been previously done in this manner by previous researchers (e.g., Aveyard, 2014). We have included a paragraph in the introduction to explain our decision. We fully agree with Reviewer #1, we could have compared different approaches by using different methods (e.g., intrinsic religiosity) in the current study. We hope to address this issue in our future research.

[Reviewer #1: Point 3] The following suggests that the results of this study are only valid for participants living in Singapore. If so, that should be stated in the abstract and discussed in the conclusion. Otherwise, the group from Singapore should be compared with a group from another country for which there is reason to believe that there is very little such so-called “superstitious belief”. That could be done relatively easily and the paper resubmitted.

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 3] We have emphasised this in the abstract that Singapore is the site of the experiment. In addition, we also indicated that the results obtained from the current study might not be specifically applicable to Singapore only and could be generalised elsewhere (e.g., Southeast-Asian countries and beyond). This point has been addressed in the discussion section.

[Reviewer #1: Point 4]

From the method section of Experiment 2: the following instruction is intended to allow participants to cheat while encouraging them not to. As a participant I would have been quite unsure what was expected of me. I would have wondered why the experimenter was making people participate in a such a shabby experiment and would therefore not have taken it very seriously. Perhaps the description is incomplete? What is missing here is reference to literature about the methods of comparable studies: other possible ways of allowing a participant to cheat while encouraging them not to do so. Surely the results depend on how the cheating option is set up and presented.

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 4] We thank Reviewer #1 for pointing this out. While we do not have other studies’ methods to compare to Experiment 2, we believe that the monetary reward ($100 SGD) is relatively attractive to the participants to induce cheating. So, the results we obtained could not be attributed to chance. However, to make the reading more streamline, we have edited the sentence from “The participants were told that the answers of each riddle were located at back of the cards. The participants were told that they should try to answer the riddles to the best of their ability without looking at the correct answer behind each card” to “The participants were told that the answers of each riddle were located at back of the cards and they should try to answer the riddles honestly and to the best of their ability.”

[Reviewer #1: Point 5]

“The experimenter also informed the participants that the correct answer to each operation would pop-up on the screen due to a programming glitch, but they could press the spacebar to stop the answers to appear. The experimenter continued to say that it would be impossible to know whether they had really pressed the spacebar or not, so it would really be up to them if they wanted to cheat or not.” The method for Experiment 1 that allowed for cheating was more appropriate.

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 5] We thank Reviewer #1 for the positive feedback.

[Reviewer #1: Point 6] Regarding the main conclusion, the lack of a moderating effect of supernatural agent belief suggests that non-believers actually do believe in supernatural agency or fear divine punishment. Does that mean this kind of belief is innate or is it a human cultural universal? More discussion and speculation about possible explanations for the finding would be appropriate. Also, literature of the following kind could be incorporated:

Pirutinsky, S., Siev, J., & Rosmarin, D. H. (2015). Scrupulosity and implicit and explicit beliefs about God. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 6, 33-38.

Jong, J., Halberstadt, J., & Bluemke, M. (2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5), 983-989.

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 6] We have included the two references in the manuscript, which were extremely useful to discuss our results. We have accordingly reviewed the discussion and addressed the issue on why non-believers might implicitly believe in supernatural agents (or fear of divine punishment).

 

[Reviewer #1: Point 7] Perhaps the last sentence of the abstract is misleading: “The results suggested the mental activation of supernatural agents reduce cheating regardless of believing in their existence.” The authors should clarify the distinction between implicit and explicit belief in this case. The findings can be interpreted as evidence that those who claim not to believe in the existence of supernatural agents actually do believe in them, i.e. explicit non-believers actually believe implicitly. This terminology could be defined and used. But there was no test for implicit belief in this study (apart from the study itself which could be defined as a test of implicit belief).

[Responses to Reviewer #1: Point 7] We have edited the abstract and made clear that the outcomes were only associated with the participant’s explicit belief of supernatural agency. We also expressed our regret for not have a measure of implicit belief of supernatural agency in the discussion, as a limitation.

 

 

 

References

 

 

Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 298–302. http://10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.006

 

Lin, P. K. F., Tong, M. W. E., Lee, L., Low, A., & Gomes, D. (2016). The prosocial impact of God concept priming on God believers. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3. 93-103. http://10.1037/cns0000077

 

McKay, R. T., & Dennett, D. C. (2009). The evolution of misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. http://10.1017/S0140525X09990975

 

McKay, R., Efferson, C., & Fehr, E. (2010). Wrath of God: Priming and punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2125

 

 

Pichon, I., Boccato, G., & Saroglou, V. (2007). Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: A priming study. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(5), 1032–1045. http://10.1002/ejsp.416

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The research is well presented and offers insight into priming and behavior in Singapore. I appreciate that the authors are upfront about the unique nature of Singapore's culture and religious traditions and how this likely impacted the outcomes. I would like to see mention of Singapore as the site of the experiment mentioned in the abstract.

 

 

Author Response

We have addressed the queries (highlighted and color-coded) and made the necessary changes in the manuscript. Please see the list of changes/responses to the comments:

 

Reviewer #2: The research is well presented and offers insight into priming and behavior in Singapore. I appreciate that the authors are upfront about the unique nature of Singapore's culture and religious traditions and how this likely impacted the outcomes. [Reviewer #2: Point 1] I would like to see mention of Singapore as the site of the experiment mentioned in the abstract.

[Responses to Reviewer #2: Point 1] We thank Reviewer #2’s suggestion. We have included a statement in the abstract to indicate the study was conducted in Singapore.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The following sentence in the abstract could be more direct:

The results suggested that the mental activation of supernatural agents could reduce cheating behaviour and explicit belief in supernatural agents (e.g., believers vs. nonbelievers) did not moderate the impact of supernatural priming on cheating behaviours.

How about this: 

The results suggested that the mental activation of supernatural agents could reduce cheating behaviour regardless of the presence or absence of explicit belief in supernatural agents.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the suggestion.

We have changed the abstract to "The results suggested that the mental activation of supernatural agents could reduce cheating behaviour regardless of the presence or absence of explicit belief in supernatural agents."

 

Sincerely,

Patrick Lin 

Lidia Suárez