The psychological advantage of unfalsifiability: The appeal of untestable religious and political ideologies

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Volumn 108, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 515-529

  Friesen, Justin P ^a   Campbell, Troy H ^b   Kay, Aaron C ^b  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

^b DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Falsifiability; Ideology; Motivated social cognition; Worldview defense

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; ATTITUDE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; FEMALE; HOMOSEXUALITY; HUMAN; MALE; MARRIAGE; MIDDLE AGED; MOTIVATION; PERCEPTION; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION; YOUNG ADULT;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; ATTITUDE; CULTURE; FEMALE; HOMOSEXUALITY; HUMANS; MALE; MARRIAGE; MIDDLE AGED; MOTIVATION; POLITICS; RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84925610128     PISSN: 00223514     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000018     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. Akhtar, O., Paunesku, D., & Tormala, Z. L. (2013). Weak_strong: The ironic effect of argument strength on supportive advocacy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1214 -1226. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167213492430
3. Alicke, M. D. (1985). Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1621-1630. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.49.6.1621
4. Andersen, S. M., Chen, S., & Miranda, R. (2002). Significant others and the self. Self and Identity, 1, 159 -168. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/152988602317319348
5. Baron, J. (2012, November 29). Applying evidence to social programs. The New York Times Online. Retrieved from http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/applying-evidence-to-social-programs/
6. Bastardi, A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Ross, L. (2011). Wishful thinking: Belief, desire, and the motivated evaluation of scientific evidence. Psychological Science, 22, 731-732. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611406447
7. Baumeister, R. F., Dale, K., & Sommer, K. L. (1998). Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial. Journal of Personality, 66, 1081-1184. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6494.00043
8. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
9. Borstein, D. (2012, May 30). The dawn of the evidence-based budget. The New York Times Opinionator Blog. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/worthy-of-government-funding-prove-it
10. Boyle, A. (2012, July 5) The Higgs boson explained in (just a bit more than) a minute. NBC News. Retrieved from http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/05/12583436-the-higgs-boson-explained-in-just-abit-more-than-a-minute
11. Brown, J. D. (1986). Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social judgments. Social Cognition, 4, 353-376. http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/soco.1986.4.4.353
12. Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon's Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3-5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393980
13. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116-131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.116
14. Callan, M. J., Kay, A. C., Davidenko, N., & Ellard, J. H. (2009). The effects of justice motivation on memory for self- and other-relevant events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 614-623. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.013
15. CERN. (2012, July 4). CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson. Retrieved from http://press.web.cern.ch/pressreleases/2012/07/cern-experiments-observe-particle-consistent-longsought-higgs-boson
16. Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
17. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.
18. Delli Carpini, M. X., & Keeter, S. (1991). Stability and change in the U.S. public's knowledge of politics. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55, 583-612. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/269283
19. DiMaggio, P., Evans, J., & Bryson, B. (1996). Have Americans' social attitudes become more polarized? American Journal of Sociology, 102, 690-755. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/230995
20. Ditto, P. H. (2009). Passion, reason, and necessity: A quantity-ofprocessing view of motivated reasoning. In T. Bayne & J. Fernández (Eds.), Delusion and self-deception: Affective and motivational influences on belief formation (Macquarie monographs in cognitive science, pp. 23-53). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
21. Ditto, P. H., & Boardman, A. F. (1995). Perceived accuracy of favorable and unfavorable psychological feedback. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 16, 137-157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01973533.1995.9646106
22. Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 568-584. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.568
23. Ditto, P. H., Munro, G. D., Apanovitch, A. M., Scepansky, J. A., & Lockhart, L. K. (2003). Spontaneous skepticism: The interplay of motivation and expectation in responses to favorable and unfavorable medical diagnoses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1120-1132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167203254536
24. Dunning, D., Meyerowitz, J. A., & Holzberg, A. D. (1989). Ambiguity and self-evaluation: The role of idiosyncratic trait definitions in self-serving assessments of ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1082-1090. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1082
25. Fein, S., & Spencer, S. J. (1997). Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 31-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.31
26. Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R., & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24, 939-946. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612464058
27. Freud, S. (1927/1968). The future of an illusion. In J. Strachey (Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 21). London, UK: Hogarth Press.
28. Freud, S. (1937/1968). Moses and monotheism. In J. Strachey (Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 23). London, UK: Hogarth Press.
29. Friesen, J. P., Kay, A. C., Eibach, R. P., & Galinsky, A. D. (2014). Seeking structure in social organization: Compensatory control and the psychological advantages of hierarchy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 590-609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035620
30. Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 29, pp. 61-139). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
31. Harris, S. (2004). The end of faith: Religion, terror and the future of reason. New York, NY: Norton.
32. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88-110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1
33. Hirsh, J. B., Mar, R. A., & Peterson, J. B. (2012). Psychological entropy: A framework for understanding uncertainty-related anxiety. Psychological Review, 119, 304-320. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026767
34. Inzlicht, M., & Tullett, A. M. (2010). Reflecting on God: Religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors. Psychological Science, 21, 1184-1190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610375451
35. Jost, J. T. (1995). Negative illusions: Conceptual clarification and psychological evidence concerning false consciousness. Political Psychology, 16, 397-424. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3791837
36. Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in systemjustification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1994.tb01008.x
37. Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881-919. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x
38. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339-375. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
39. Jost, J. T., Kay, A. C., & Thorisdottir, H. (2009). Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916.001.0001
40. Jost, J. T., & Major, B. (Eds.). (2001). The psychology of legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
41. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 37-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353750
42. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18
43. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Peach, J. M., Laurin, K., Friesen, J., Zanna, M. P., & Spencer, S. J. (2009). Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things are as the way they should be. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 421-434. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0015997
44. Kay, A. C., & Jost, J. T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of "poor but happy" and "poor but honest" stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 823-837. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.5.823
45. Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., Chua, S. N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). For God (or) country: The hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 725-739. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021140
46. Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 264-268. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01649.x
47. King, L. A., & Hicks, J. A. (2009). Detecting and constructing meaning in life events. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 317-330. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760902992316
48. Knowles, E. D., Lowery, B. S., Hogan, C. M., & Chow, R. M. (2009). On the malleability of ideology: Motivated construals of color blindness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 857-869. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013595
49. Kruglanski, A. W. (1996). Motivated social cognition: Principles of the interface. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 493-520). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
50. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480-498. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480
51. Kunda, Z., Davies, P. G., Adams, B. D., & Spencer, S. J. (2002). The dynamic time course of stereotype activation: Activation, dissipation, and resurrection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 283-299. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.3.283
52. Kunda, Z., & Spencer, S. J. (2003). When do stereotypes come to mind and when do they color judgment? A goal-based theoretical framework for stereotype activation and application. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 522-544. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.4.522
53. Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing-Therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24, 622-633. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612457686
54. Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098-2109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098
55. Luhrmann, T. M. (2013, May 29). Belief is the least part of faith. The New York Times, p. A23.
56. Lynch, A. (1996). Thought contagion: How belief spreads through society. New York, NY: Basic Books.
57. Mason, W., & Suri, S. (2012). Conducting behavioral research on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 1-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0124-6
58. Mazar, N., Amir, O., & Ariely, D. (2008). The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. Journal of Marketing Research, 45, 633-644. http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633
59. McGregor, I. (2006a). Offensive defensiveness: Toward an integrative neuroscience of compensatory zeal after mortality salience, personal uncertainty, and other poignant self-threats. Psychological Inquiry, 17, 299-308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10478400701366977
60. McGregor, I. (2006b). Zeal appeal: The allure of moral extremes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 343-348. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp2804_7
61. McGregor, I., Nash, K., & Prentice, M. (2012). Religious zeal after goal frustration. In M. A. Hogg & D. L. Blaylock (Eds.), Extremism and the psychology of uncertainty (pp. 147-164). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
62. McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., & Spencer, S. J. (2001). Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 472-488. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.3.472
63. Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 57-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10000968
64. Mishra, H., Mishra, A., & Shiv, B. (2011). In praise of vagueness: Malleability of vague information as a performance booster. Psychological Science, 22, 733-738. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611407208
65. Munro, G. D., & Ditto, P. H. (1997). Biased assimilation, attitude polarization, and affect in reactions to stereotyped-relevant scientific information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 636-653. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167297236007
66. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231
67. Oppenheimer, D. M., Meyvis, T., & Davidenko, N. (2009). Instructional manipulation checks: Detecting satisficing to increase statistical power. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 867-872. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.009
68. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123-205. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60214-2
69. Phillips, A. (2006, February 26). A mind is a terrible thing to measure. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/opinion/26phillips.html
70. Popper, K. R. (1962). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. New York, NY: Basic Books.
71. Redlawsk, D. P. (2002). Hot cognition or cool consideration? Testing the effects of motivated reasoning on political decision making. The Journal of Politics, 64, 1021-1044. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.00161
72. Sagan, C. (1995). The demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark. New York, NY: Random House.
73. Sedikides, C. (2010). Why does religiosity persist? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 3-6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352323
74. Sheikh, M. A. (2013, May). Good government and statistics Canada: The need for true independence. Academic Matters. Retrieved from http://www.academicmatters.ca/2013/05/good-government-and-statisticscanada-the-need-for-true-independence/
75. Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2012). On the perpetuation of ignorance: System dependence, system justification, and the motivated avoidance of sociopolitical information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 264-280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026272
76. Shepherd, S., Kay, A. C., Landau, M. J., & Keefer, L. A. (2011). Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense: Distinguishing compensatory control from uncertainty management and terror management processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 949-958. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.026
77. Sherman, D. K., Kinias, Z., Major, B., Kim, H. S., & Prenovost, M. (2007). The group as a resource: Reducing biased attributions for group success and failure via group affirmation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1100-1112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167207303027
78. Sherman, D. A. K., Nelson, L. D., & Steele, C. M. (2000). Do messages about health risks threaten the self? Increasing the acceptance of threatening health messages via self-affirmation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1046 -1058. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/01461672002611003
79. Sinclair, L., & Kunda, Z. (1999). Reactions to a Black professional: Motivated inhibition and activation of conflicting stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 885-904. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.5.885
80. Sinclair, L., & Kunda, Z. (2000). Motivated stereotyping of women: She's fine if she praised me but incompetent if she criticized me. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1329 -1342. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167200263002
81. Sloman, S. A., Fernbach, P. M., & Hagmayer, Y. (2010). Self-deception requires vagueness. Cognition, 115, 268-281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.017
82. Stewart, J. (2012, October 25). American pickers. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central). Retrieved from http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-25-2012/american-pickers
83. Turner, J. C., Brown, R. J., & Tajfel, H. (1979). Social comparison and group interest in ingroup favouritism. European Journal of Social Psychology, 9, 187-204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420090207
84. Twenge, J. M., & King, L. A. (2005). A good life is a personal life: Relationship fulfillment and work fulfillment in judgments of life quality. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 336-353. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2004.01.004
85. Vail, K. E., III, Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351165
86. van den Bos, K. (2009). Making sense of life: The existential self trying to deal with personal uncertainty. Psychological Inquiry, 20, 197-217. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10478400903333411
87. Vardiman, L. (2012). Did the 'God particle' create matter? Acts & Facts. 41(3), 12-14. Retrieved from http://www.icr.org/article/6630/
88. Westen, D., Blagov, P. S., Harenski, K., Kilts, C., & Hamann, S. (2006). Neural bases of motivated reasoning: An FMRI study of emotional constraints on partisan political judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1947-1958. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2006.18.11.1947