1. The Influence of Religious Beliefs on False Memory of Fabricated Events
Ellen Searle, Jennifer Vonk, & Brock Brothers, Oakland University
Methods
• 595 undergraduate students, completed the study online at surveymonkey.com
for course credit. They answered demographic questions, and completed two
questionnaires about religious beliefs. A breakdown of participants by gender and
religious/nonreligious is shown below:
• The True Religious Beliefs Scale is a 59 question compilation of items from several
scales including six items from the Shortened Post-Critical Belief Scale (Duriez,
Soenens, & Hutsebaut, 2004), ten items from the Beliefs and Values Scale (King et
al., 2005), two items from the God Image Inventory (Lawrence, 1997), five items
from The God Delusion (Dawkins, 2006, pg207-208), four items from the Literal,
Anti-Literal, and Mythological Scales (Hunt, 1972), and some additional items (α =
.98 ) .
• The Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) contains 20
items that measure the extent to which one views religion as a single, absolute
truth ( α = .95).
• They were then presented with 8 images representing:
and asked to indicate on a 5-point Likert scale how well they remembered each
event, and how they felt about it.
Results
Data was examined for normality and, due to a positive skew, a
logarithmic transformation was applied to the memory scores. The
transformed and standardized memory scores for the false events
were then regressed on to strength of religious beliefs and valence
for the false event (measured by how positively participants felt
about the event) using four hierarchical regression models.
Consistent with Frenda et al. (2013), memory for the corresponding
true event was entered into the first step as well as religious
category (religious or non-religious). A composite religiosity score
was created from the standardized average of the two religiosity
measures and entered as the main predictor in the second step of
the regression analyses along with valence. The interaction
between religiosity and valence was entered into the third step.
Significant interactions were examined using simple slopes tests for
scores one SD above and below the means, and are depicted below.
Introduction
False memory refers to memory for events that did not actually occur
(Loftus & Palmer, 1974). Research indicates that memory can be biased
by prior beliefs and attitudes (e.g., Van Bavel & Cunningham, 2012).
Frenda and colleagues (2013) found that fabricated events were falsely
remembered by participants as being in line with their political beliefs
(i.e. a Democrat would falsely remember events that negatively depicted
Republicans), and their attitudes toward those events. The current study
sought to replicate this finding in a religious context. We hypothesized
that participants who were highly religious would falsely remember
events that positively depicted religion and negatively depicted atheism,
whereas participants who were less religious would be less likely to
falsely remember positive religious events and negative atheist events.
We hypothesized that participants who were religious and who felt
positively about the religious events would be most likely to remember
those events.
References
Altemeyer, B. & Hunsberger, B. (1992).
Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism,
quest, and prejudice. The International
Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2,
113-133.
Frenda, S. J., Knowles, E. J., Saletan, W., Loftus,
E. (2013). False memories of fabricated
political events. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology,
Loftus, E. F. & Palmer, J. C. (1974).
Reconstruction of automobile destruction:
an example of the interaction between
language 49, 280- 286.
Van Bavel, J. J. & Cunningham, W. A. (2012). A
social identity approach to person memory:
group membership, collective identification,
and social role shape attention and memory.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
Religious Atheist
Positive Negative Positive Negative
True False True False True False True False
Discussion
In general, religious participants were more
likely than non-religious participants to
indicate false memory for all events.
Religious events were more likely to be
remembered if participants felt positively
about them, regardless of whether the event
was positive or negative, and if the participant
was religious or non-religious.
Atheist events, in contrast, were more likely to
be remembered if participants felt negatively
about them, if the participants were religious,
suggesting a stronger bias of religious
affiliation for non-religious events. Events may
seem more salient even when fabricated, if
they attack one’s current belief system.
This is the first study to examine false memory
in a religious context and adds to the false
memory literature by adding further support to
the idea that preexisting attitudes and beliefs
can bias memory.
Contact info: vonk@oakland.edu
Thank you to the Joan and Bob Rosen
Fellowship for funding and support.
Negative atheist events were more likely to be falsely
remembered by religious participants and those who felt
negatively about them. (Interaction not significant)
Religious Nonreligious Total
Male 85 31 116
Female 402 77 479
Total 487 108 595