Do God Primes Prime God? Converging Evidence Against the Efficacy of Experimental Religious Priming
Abstract
How does religion change people? Religious priming has been used to scientifically ask this question for nearly two decades, linking religious cognition to varied outcomes – especially prosociality. Priming research has proliferated in the absence of direct evidence that religious priming tools work as implicitly assumed: by activating religious cognition. Here, we evaluate this assumption. Across a bias-adjusted meta-analysis (k = 66) and two experiments (total N = 2960), we report strong and converging evidence: 1) against the validity of the most commonly used priming methodology, 2) against even overt primes’ abilities to robustly affect prosocial cognition or behavior, 3) against a meaningful relationship between cognitive activation of religion and prosocial behavior; further, evidence was 4) in favor of even ineffective primes nonetheless inviting participant suspicion. Combined, this suggests that the evidential strength of existing priming research is likely overstated, with critical assumptions now contradicted by evidence.
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BibTeX
@misc{gervais2026primes,
title = {{Do God Primes Prime God? Converging Evidence Against the Efficacy of Experimental Religious Priming}},
author = {Will M Gervais and Meara Geraty and Aiyana Willard},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/dtkzf_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/dtkzf_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Do God Primes Prime God? Converging Evidence Against the Efficacy of Experimental Religious Priming
AU - Will M Gervais
AU - Meara Geraty
AU - Aiyana Willard
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/dtkzf_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/dtkzf_v1/
AB - How does religion change people? Religious priming has been used to scientifically ask this question for nearly two decades, linking religious cognition to varied outcomes – especially prosociality. Priming research has proliferated in the absence of direct evidence that religious priming tools work as implicitly assumed: by activating religious cognition. Here, we evaluate this assumption. Across a bias-adjusted meta-analysis (k = 66) and two experiments (total N = 2960), we report strong and converging evidence: 1) against the validity of the most commonly used priming methodology, 2) against even overt primes’ abilities to robustly affect prosocial cognition or behavior, 3) against a meaningful relationship between cognitive activation of religion and prosocial behavior; further, evidence was 4) in favor of even ineffective primes nonetheless inviting participant suspicion. Combined, this suggests that the evidential strength of existing priming research is likely overstated, with critical assumptions now contradicted by evidence.
ER -