Beliefs change behavior only when they enter conscious awareness

Evidence

The key to this puzzle can be found in the everyday workings (and failings) of the human mind. Even though God is omniscient and watches people 24/7, people aren’t thinking of Him 24/7. Believers have to think of God and His omniscience at any given moment if that belief is to have an impact on their actions. From a psychological perspective, there is little reason to expect a wholesale, unconditional association between religion and prosociality. This is not an issue unique to religion; it is true for most other attitudes or values that people hold dear. For example, there is no reason to expect that individuals who are sincerely committed to protecting the environment will always recycle or pay a cost to avoid polluting the air. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 151

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: Core mechanism statement: an omniscient God has zero behavioral force unless the believer is thinking of Him — this is the keystone of the reader’s analytical bridge.

Related

• Omniscient-god beliefs only change behavior when the deity is actively on the believer’s mind. (similarity 0.90)
• Belief in a watching God affects behavior only when consciously activated. (similarity 0.88)
• Moral beliefs influence action only when momentarily cognitively salient, not merely held. (similarity 0.83)
• Mind-reading capacities are prerequisites for believers to interact with and be policed by gods (similarity 0.82)
• Priming intuitive thinking temporarily raises belief in God. (similarity 0.82)
• Religion shapes behavior only when situational cues make it salient. (similarity 0.82)
• Priming reminders activate religious moral behavior; beliefs alone do not (similarity 0.82)
• Religious belief rests on ordinary cognition that predates motivational influence. (similarity 0.82)
• Religious disbelief is linked to a stable analytic cognitive style. (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (similarity 0.81)
• Religious primes fail to affect atheists, disproving a purely ideomotor account (similarity 0.81)
• Studying nonbelievers’ responses to religious primes requires nonconscious priming and independent belief measurement. (similarity 0.81)
• Atheists’ unresponsiveness to God primes rules out ideomotor explanations (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief depends on mentalizing skills that imagine God’s mental states. (similarity 0.80)
• Big God omniscience is not automatically and constantly effective on behavior (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Unconsciously primed concepts trigger corresponding behaviors in people #contradicts (0.90) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 158
• The mere feeling of being observed shifts behavior from selfish to reciprocal norms #contradicts (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 87