Being watched by God intensifies awareness of social surveillance on Sundays

Evidence

We asked Christian and nonreligious participants to complete a measure of “public self-awareness” throughout the week, over a period of several weeks. Participants had no clue that this was a study about religion. They completed an instrument that measures feelings of being under social surveillance. They expressed agreement with statements such as: “Right now I am self-conscious about the way I look,” and “Right now I am concerned about what other people think of me.” On average, Christians and nonbelievers did not differ in public self-awareness. On any day of the week except Sunday, there were no differences. However, on Sunday, and Sunday only, Christians expressed greater feelings of being watched compared to nonbelievers, and compared to other Christians who completed these questions on other days. This pattern of results mimics exactly the Sunday Effects found for charitability and for porn consumption. Importantly, this effect was not simply due to Christians attending church on Sundays. Even when we matched participants on frequency of church attendance, there was a greater tendency to feel watched on Sundays. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 147

Categorization

• XREF: Core mechanism for the reader’s analytical integration: feelings of being observed are situationally cued (Sunday salience of God), not always-on — this parallels how Rodrigues’ perceived divine gaze depends on contexts where God is salient, and why the fumi-e ritual works by forcing the gaze into a public, witnessing context. — connects to: The smartphone operates as devotional object of digital servitude — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 41
• DEFINE: Defines ‘public self-awareness’ as the measurable construct (feeling under social surveillance) that operationalizes watching-God effects.