Abstract
Examining the relationship between brain activity and religious fundamentalism, this study explores whether fundamentalist religious beliefs increase responses to error-related words among participants intolerant to uncertainty (i.e., high in the need for closure) in comparison to those who have a high degree of toleration for uncertainty (i.e., those who are low in the need for closure). We examine a negative-going event-related brain potentials occurring 400 ms after stimulus onset (the N400) due to its well-understood association with the reactions to emotional conflict. Religious fundamentalism and tolerance of uncertainty were measured on self-report measures, and electroencephalographic neural reactivity was recorded as participants were performing an emotional Stroop task. In this task, participants read neutral words and words related to uncertainty, errors, and pondering, while being asked to name the color of the ink with which the word is written. The results confirm that among people who are intolerant of uncertainty (i.e., those high in the need for closure), religious fundamentalism is associated with an increased N400 on error-related words compared with people who tolerate uncertainty well (i.e., those low in the need for closure).
Highlights
Religious fundamentalism has significantly shaped world history and continues to influence individual attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Emerson and Hartman, 2006; Paloutzian and Park, 2014)
We did not find any main effects of religious fundamentalism or NFC, nor did we find an interaction between them for interference index related to uncertainty, pondering and error at the behavioral level of analysis, neither for reaction times (RT) nor accuracy
We did not observe any significant main effects of religious fundamentalism or NFC nor did we find interactions between them in interference effects for words related to uncertainty and pondering (R2 = 0.01, b = −0.62, p = 0.620, 95% CI [−3.12, 1.88]; R2 = 0.01, b = −0.63, p = 0.603, 95% CI [−3.05, 1.80], respectively)
Summary
Religious fundamentalism has significantly shaped world history and continues to influence individual attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Emerson and Hartman, 2006; Paloutzian and Park, 2014). Researchers have demonstrated that it provides individuals with a sense of meaning in life and that it offers relief from distress and uncertainty (Hood et al, 2005; Williamson and Hood, 2014; Phillips and Ano, 2015; Kossowska et al, 2016) It fosters selfregulation and, self-control (e.g., McCullough and Willoughby, 2009; Rounding et al, 2012; McCullough and Carter, 2013). We tested the hypothesis that religious fundamentalism is related to increased sensitivity to error-related words, especially among people who are intolerant of uncertainty, i.e., those high in the need for closure (NFC, Kruglanski, 1989). We test this claim at the electrophysiological level. Our study contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between religiosity and self-control
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