Religious reminders boost self-control but a controlling God reduces goal pursuit

Evidence

Recently, Kevin Rounding, Albert Lee, Lijun Ji, and Jill Jacobson showed this intimate relation in a series of experiments. They found that religious reminders toughened people, making them more willing to endure unpleasant experiences. For example, after nonconscious reminders of God, believers were more willing to drink a distasteful mix of juice with vinegar. Similar effects were found on delay gratification: religious reminders increased the tendency to agree to wait for one week to receive 6 instead of being paid 5 immediately. Also, religious reminders caused believers to persist longer at an unsolvable anagram task. On the other hand, there are reasons to think that religion can also be a burden on self-control. Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby point out that ecstatic experiences such as speaking in tongues seem to reflect a loss of self-control. Clearly, not all aspects of religion encourage self-control. Kristin Laurin, Aaron Kay, and Grainne Fitzsimmons emphasize that many believers see God as a controlling force who constrains their lives. They have shown that to the extent that belief in a controlling God is prevalent, reminders of God increase temptation resistance, but decrease goal pursuit. Clearly, given the complexity of religion, we should not expect a straightforward link between religion and self-regulation. Nevertheless, there is reason to think that greater self-control is part of what prosocial religions do, at least under some contexts. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 383

Recently, Kevin Rounding, Albert Lee, Lijun Ji, and Jill Jacobson showed this intimate relation in a series of experiments. They found that religious reminders toughened people, making them more willing to endure unpleasant experiences. For example, after nonconscious reminders of God, believers were more willing to drink a distasteful mix of juice with vinegar. Similar effects were found on delay gratification: religious reminders increased the tendency to agree to wait for one week to receive 6 instead of being paid 5 immediately. Also, religious reminders caused believers to persist longer at an unsolvable anagram task. On the other hand, there are reasons to think that religion can also be a burden on self-control. Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby point out that ecstatic experiences such as speaking in tongues seem to reflect a loss of self-control. Clearly, not all aspects of religion encourage self-control. Kristin Laurin, Aaron Kay, and Grainne Fitzsimmons emphasize that many believers see God as a controlling force who constrains their lives. They have shown that to the extent that belief in a controlling God is prevalent, reminders of God increase temptation resistance, but decrease goal pursuit. Clearly, given the complexity of religion, we should not expect a straightforward link between religion and self-regulation. Nevertheless, there is reason to think that greater self-control is part of what prosocial religions do, at least under some contexts. … Finally, it has been observed that members of prosocial religious groups treat each other as fictive kin, to use a term popularized by evolutionary scientist Randolph Nesse. Thus, “Among the Hebrews and Phoenicians … the worshipper is called brother (that is, kinsman or sister of the god).” Christians and Muslims also describe themselves as belonging to a brotherhood, a common term that often applies today to the global fraternity of Islam (ikhwan). — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 383

Categorization

• XREF: The controlling-God vs. goal pursuit split connects to the reader’s Big God surveillance framework — the mechanism is God’s perceived monitoring, adding a nuance that different framings of the deity produce opposite self-regulation outcomes.
• QUESTION: The inverse effect — a controlling God decreasing goal pursuit — complicates the omniscient-bystander mechanism; worth checking whether fumi-e-era theology of God as punisher would dampen the endurance effects Norenzayan reports.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 383