When Science Replaces Religion: Science as a Secular Authority Bolsters Moral Sensitivity.

Onurcan Yilmaz,Hasan G Bahçekapili,Michiel Van Elk

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137499

Abstract

Scientific and religious thinking compete with each other on several levels. For example, activating one generally weakens the other. Since priming religion is known to increase moral behaviour and moral sensitivity, priming science might be expected to have the opposite effect. However, it was recently demonstrated that, on the contrary, science priming increases moral sensitivity as well. The present set of studies sought to replicate this effect and test two explanations for it. Study 1 used a sentence unscrambling task for implicitly priming the concept of science but failed to replicate its effect on moral sensitivity, presumably due to a ceiling effect. Study 2 replicated the effect with a new measure of moral sensitivity. Study 3 tested whether science-related words create this effect by activating the idea of secular authority or by activating analytic thinking. It was demonstrated that words related to secular authority, but not words related to analytic thinking, produced a similar increase in moral sensitivity. Religiosity level of the participants did not influence this basic finding. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that science as a secular institution has overtaken some of the functions of religion in modern societies.

Highlights

In parallel with the historical tension between science and religion, recent psychological studies have revealed a conflict in people’s minds between scientific and religious thinking
When we controlled for religiosity as a covariate from 1 to 7, the main effect of priming condition remained constant, F (1, 77) = 0.32, p = .576, ηp2 = .004. This result might indicate that the original findings are spurious, another possibility is that date rape is seen as obviously wrong by almost everyone in the Turkish culture and we encountered a ceiling effect
Five of the stems were the first two or three letters of words related to secular authority, five were the first two or three letters of words related to analytic thinking, and five were neutral. (The actual words used in the study were in Turkish since all participants were Turkish native speakers.) The results revealed that science priming increased the accessibility of words related to secular authority: Participants in the Science group (M = 2.50, SD = 0.79; 95% CI [2.11, 2.89]) produced more secular authority words compared to the Neutral group (M = 1.82, SD = 0.81; 95% CI [1.41, 2.24]), F(1, 33) = 6.30, p = .017, ηp2 =

Summary

Introduction

In parallel with the historical tension between science and religion, recent psychological studies have revealed a conflict in people’s minds between scientific and religious thinking. Exposing people to stimuli that prime science or analytic thinking leads to a reduction in religious faith [1]. The same study found that when people are led to think analytically, they report less belief in God. On the other hand, it is well known that exposing people to religious symbols leads them to more prosocial, and moral, behaviour [3]. Exposing people to scientific arguments to the effect that free will is an illusion makes them more likely to cheat in a subsequent task [4]. A recent study [5] revealed that, in contrast to that expectation, exposing people to stimuli

Results

Discussion

Conclusion