Abstract: We assessed how religiosity is related to desired emotions. We tested two competing hypotheses. First, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that strengthen foundational religious beliefs (i.e., more awe and gratitude and less pride). Second, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that promote prosocial engagement (e.g., more love and empathy and less anger and jealousy). Two cross-cultural studies supported the first hypothesis. Religiosity was related to desire for emotions that strengthen religious beliefs, but not to desire for socially engaging or socially disengaging emotions. These findings held across countries and across several different religions. A third study investigating the mechanisms of both hypotheses using structural equation modeling supported only the first hypothesis. This research extends prior work on desired emotions to the domain of religiosity. It demonstrates that the emotions religious people desire may be those that help strengthen their religious beliefs.
Keywords: religion, emotion, emotion regulation
General Discussion
The present investigation examined how religiosity is associated with desired emotions. According to the belief maintenance account, religiosity is associated with desiring
emotions that promote recognition of supernatural beings,
positively for other-praising emotions and negatively for
self-praising emotions. According to the prosocial facilitation account, religiosity is associated with desiring emotions
that promote positive interpersonal functioning, positively
for socially engaging emotions and negatively for socially
disengaging emotions. In two cross-cultural studies, results
supported the belief maintenance account, such that religiosity was associated with a stronger desire for the other-praising emotions of awe and gratitude, a weaker desire for the
self-praising emotion of pride, and no significant association
with a desire for socially engaging or socially disengaging
emotions. These associations held when controlling for emotion experience. They were robust across countries and were
not moderated by religion, with the possible exception of
pride in Study 2. An additional study supported the role of
belief maintenance, but not prosocial facilitation, as the
underlying mechanism of these associations. Overall, the
findings show that people who are more religious value emotions that are consistent with foundational religious beliefs.
Implications for Understanding Religion
and Emotion Regulation
Previous research suggests that religion can influence emotional experience (e.g., Emmons, 2005; Kim-Prieto &
Diener, 2009). Yet little empirical attention has been devoted
to the mechanisms by which religion influences emotional
experience. One such mechanism may involve emotion regulation (for a review, see Vishkin et al., 2014). Religion may
influence emotion regulation, in part, by facilitating the use
of certain emotion regulation strategies. For instance, there is
evidence that religiosity may be linked to the more frequent
use of cognitive reappraisal (Vishkin et al., 2016).
The present study identifies an additional mechanism by
which religiosity may affect emotions—namely, by establishing desired end-states in emotion regulation (see Tamir,
2016). By directing efforts in emotion regulation, desired
end-states in emotion regulation can influence experienced
emotions. Some have suggested that pleasant emotional experiences in religion are the by-product of pursuing personally
meaningful goals (Emmons, 2005). We argue and show that
religiosity is linked not only to what people feel, but also to
what they want to feel—and what they want to feel are emotions that affirm religious beliefs, including more other-praising emotions and less self-praising emotions.
A wide scope of religious behaviors and practices become
de-mystified when understood in terms of the extent to which
they orient people toward or away from emotions that foster
religious beliefs. Contemplation may foster awe (Merton,
2007), daily prayers may foster gratitude (Vishkin et al.,
2014), and placing less emphasis on one’s personal accomplishments may diminish pride. Thus, the desirability of awe,
gratitude, and pride in religion may influence the entire fabric of religious living. Future work should examine the particular mechanisms by which religions shape and sustain
desired emotions.
Implications for Understanding Religion
Some argue that the central tenet of religion is belief in
supernatural beings (e.g., Tylor, 1871). Others argue that the
central tenet of religion is to tie people together in a social
community and strengthen social ties (Graham & Haidt,
2010; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008). Given that emotions can
help strengthen beliefs as well as social ties, we tested
whether people who are more religious desire emotions that
strengthen the belief in a supernatural being or emotions that
strengthen social ties. We found that when it comes to desiring emotions, more religious people show a stronger desire
for emotions that strengthen beliefs in supernatural beings
but not those that strengthen social ties. We do not rule out
the possibility that at least some aspects of religiosity may
also be linked to desire for socially engaging emotions, as the
results of Study 3 suggest. Future research should continue
to explore this possibility.
Implications for Understanding the Interplay
Between Religion and Culture
In Study 1, the association between religiosity and desire for
pride was weaker in some samples (i.e., the United States,
China, Germany, and Poland) than in others (i.e., Brazil,
Ghana, Israel, and Singapore). In Study 2, the association
between religiosity and desire for pride was weaker in the
United States and Turkey, relative to Israel. The variation in
Study 1 was due specifically to country and not to religion,
whereas in Study 2, country and religion were confounded
and could not be teased apart. This finding suggests that the
link between religiosity and desired emotions may be moderated by country-level norms. One possibility is that strong
norms about pride may override the influence of religiosity
on pride, irrespective of whether the norm is positive or negative. For example, the association between religiosity and
the desire for pride was weaker in the United States (Studies
1 and 2) and Turkey (Study 2) than in other countries. The
positive norm regarding pride in the United States (Mesquita
& Albert, 2007), as well as the norm of honor in Turkey
(Ozgur & Sunar, 1982), may shape the desire for pride in
these countries to such an extent that religiosity will not
influence them. Consistent with this interpretation, in Study
2, pride was desired more in the United States and Turkey
than in Israel.13 Likewise, a strong negative norm regarding
certain types of pride in China (Eid & Diener, 2001) may
have overridden the potential effect of religiosity on pride.
These possibilities, however, await further testing. Indeed,
the numerous possible pairwise comparisons make it difficult to draw strong conclusions, so these differences should
be interpreted with caution.
Studies 1 and 2 were consistent in showing that the effect
of individuals’ particular religion was limited. The associations between religiosity, awe, gratitude, socially engaging
emotions, and socially disengaging emotions in both studies,
and pride in Study 1, held across religions. This suggests that
there may be some common ground in the desirability of certain emotions in different monotheistic religions. In the longstanding debate about whether religions have more in
common (Armstrong, 1994) than differentiates them
(Prothero, 2010), the present findings favor the former view.
However, both the range of religions and the range of emotions that we sampled were limited. Future research could
examine whether idiosyncratic features of particular religions foster different desired emotions.
Limitations and Future Directions
Participants in all studies belonged predominantly (Study 1)
or exclusively (Studies 2 and 3) to monotheistic faiths. We
expect that the pursuit of desired emotions that promote the
recognition of supernatural beings depends on the existence
of supernatural beings within a belief system. However, the
associations between religiosity and desired emotions that
promote religious belief might be stronger the fewer and
more powerful the gods (Big Gods; Norenzayan, 2013). If
so, the associations might be stronger in religions that
endorse the belief in a single god. It remains to be tested
whether these associations replicate in faiths whose formal
theology is not monotheistic.
In addition, the proposed mechanism of belief maintenance was assessed via motivation to be close to god. This
allowed us to directly compare the two motivational
accounts—the desire to be close to god and the desire to be
close to others. Nonetheless, while motivation to be close to
god is a critical component of religious belief, it is not the
only component related to belief maintenance. Moreover, the
proposed mechanisms of belief maintenance and prosocial
facilitation were tested in Study 3 among adherents of a single religion. Given that the same emotion can have different
social implications in cultures higher (vs. lower) in interdependence (Uchida & Kitayama, 2009), the same emotions
may also have different social and religious implications
among adherents of different religions. Therefore, future
research should examine whether belief maintenance also
accounts for the association between religiosity and desired
emotions among adherents of other religions.
In addition, the desire for specific emotions may vary
widely across contexts. The desire for specific emotions
should be greater in contexts where those emotions facilitate
participation in religious events and ceremonies. For
instance, guilt may be more desirable before the Catholic
ritual of confession or during the Jewish day of atonement
(Yom Kippur). Happiness may be more desirable during religious feasts and holidays. It remains to be tested whether the
link between religiosity and desired emotions is moderated
by context.
Religion can be considered as both an individual difference
and a cultural variable (e.g., Gebauer et al., 2012). Accordingly,
there may be two different, but not mutually exclusive, mechanisms by which people who are more religious come to desire
emotions that align with religious beliefs. At the individual
difference level, religious people want to believe in a supernatural being and, in so doing, they may seek emotions that are
instrumental to that belief. At the cultural level, religious cultural institutions provide implicit or explicit instruction that
their members should value awe and gratitude and not necessarily pride, to leverage these emotions to promote religious
beliefs. Future research should examine the manner in which
desired emotions in religion are instilled.
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