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- All Subjects: Religiousness
- All Subjects: Smiling
- Creators: Shiota, Michelle N.
Description
The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion suggests that positive emotions should broaden thought and behavior repertoires in order to develop lasting resources. In the social domain, this means deploying a variety of affiliative strategies in order to build cooperative relationships. A functionalist perspective on positive emotion suggests that different positive emotions should have distinct effects on these affiliative mechanisms. This study elicited awe, amusement, pride or a neutral control in pairs of same sex strangers. They then completed an open-ended "getting to know you" conversation, which were recorded and coded for affiliative behaviors—smiling, laughter, mimicry, and asking questions. After, they rated their perception of the other as complex and how much they liked each other. Then they played the prisoner's dilemma game. Results indicate that there was a significant mediated effect such that being in the pride condition predicted greater smiling, and smiling predicted cooperation on the prisoner's dilemma. This was true both when an individual's own smiling was predicting their cooperative behavior and when their partner's smiling was predicting their cooperative behavior. However, these effects were only seen in female dyads, not male dyads. There was also a significant mediated effect such that pride led women to ask more questions, which led partners to like each other more. Additionally, awe led to greater mimicry in men, which in turn led to greater cooperation. In women, awe led to greater perception of the other as complex. Overall, these results indicate that there are broaden and build effects of positive emotions, but these are specific to both the emotion and the sex of the interaction members. This is also the first study to demonstrate both an actor and a partner effect of smiling on cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma. An important area for further inquiry will be the interaction of emotion and sex in predicting social behavior. While sex differences in responding to threats have been characterized by the “tend and befriend” versus “fight or flight” action patterns, a similar approach may also need to be developed for sex differences in response to opportunities.
ContributorsDanvers, Alexander (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Committee member) / Kwan, Virginia S.Y. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Numerous published studies and a meta-analysis suggest that priming religion causes an increase in prosocial behaviors. However, mediating mechanisms of this purported causal relationship have not yet been formally tested. In line with cultural evolutionary theories and their supporting evidence, I test the proposition that public self-awareness mediates the effect of priming religion on prosociality. However, other theories of religion suggest that persons may feel small when perceiving God, and these feelings have predicted prosociality in published research. In line with this, I also test whether a sense of small self and, relatedly, self-transcendent connection, are possible mediators of the religion priming effect on prosociality. In this study, I implicitly prime religion and test whether the above constructs mediate a potential effect on prosocial intentions. Although self-transcendent connection predicted prosocial intentions, the implicit prime affected neither the mediating variables nor prosocial intentions, nor were any significant indirect effects evident. Thus, no causal evidence of mediation was found. In addition, I examined whether God representations moderate the path from implicit religion priming to each proposed mediator. The results suggest that a benevolent God representation moderates the effect of religion priming on self-transcendent connection and that an ineffable God representation moderates the effect of religion priming on sense of small self. Lastly, I tested for mediation with a cross-sectional path model containing religiosity and belief in God as predictors. The results suggest that religiosity, controlling for belief in God, predicts prosociality through self-transcendent connection but belief in God, controlling for religiosity, does not predict prosociality. Implications for the religion priming literature and, more generally, the psychology of religion, are discussed.
ContributorsScott, Matthew J (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Committee member) / Johnson, Kathryn A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018