Self-Enhancement and Religiosity
Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
Final Report Abstract
The self-concept is among the most intensely researched areas in psychology. The selfconcept is also among the most heavily debated areas. A most prominent disagreement on the nature of the self-concept exists between two traditions: The psychology of self and the psychology of religion. Researchers in the psychology of self tradition believe in two fundamental―and, thus, universal―principles that govern the self-concepts of psychologically healthy people: The first principle posits that people derive self-esteem from living up to cultural norms and values. That “self-esteem as social value principle” is thought to be universal and, thus, it should generalize to religiosity. As such, people should derive self-esteem from their personal religiosity, but only if ambient cultural norms and values embrace religiosity. Put otherwise, personal religiosity should predict higher self-esteem, but only in religious cultures and not in secular cultures. The second principle concerns self-enhancement―that is, the tendency to see oneself as more positive than objective circumstances warrant. More precisely, the second principle posits that people self-enhance on attributes that are central to themselves. This “self-centrality breeds selfenhancement principle” is also thought to be universal and, thus, it should apply to all psychologically healthy people, including religious people: For religious people, religiosity is particularly self-central and, thus, religious people should self-enhance in religiosity-related domains (e.g., overclaim their religious knowledge, overstate their fulfillment of religious commandments). Researchers in the psychology of religion tradition have a fundamentally different view of the self-concept. Their view is primarily derived from religious teachings and this view currently gains increasing popularity in psychological science. Most notably, many researchers in the psychology of religion tradition refute that the two principles from the psychology of self (see previous paragraph) generalize to religiosity. As to the self-esteem as social value principle, those researchers regard religiosity as a general well-spring of health and happiness and, thus, posit that religiosity universally predicts better psychological heath, including self-esteem. In other words, religiosity should confer self-esteem benefits across cultural contexts, irrespective of ambient religiosity norms and values. As to the self-centrality breeds self-enhancement principle, many psychology of religion researchers posit that religiosity “quiets the ego” and is, thus, an antidote to self-enhancement (irrespective of whether the self-enhancement domain is selfcentral or not). The present project examined the workings of the self-concept among religious people. That is, the project competitively tested whether the psychology of self’s two principles generalize to the religious domain/to religious people (prediction from the psychology of self), or whether those two principles do not generalize to religiosity (prediction from the psychology of religion). The empirical results of the project were clear-cut and sided firmly with the prediction from the psychology of self at the expense of the prediction from the psychology of religion. More precisely, the first work package found substantial relations between religiosity and self-esteem in religious cultural contexts, but insignificant relations in secular cultural contexts. Results were based on three very large, cross-cultural samples (Study 1: N = 2,195,301 from 65 countries; Study 2: N = 560,264 from 36 countries; Study 3: N = 1,188,536 across 1,932 urban areas from 243 federal states in 18 countries). The second work package found that religious people did not abstain from self-enhancement, but that they self-enhanced in self-central domains. Results came from six large studies on Christian self-enhancement. A first set of three studies used different self-enhancement measures among participants primarily from the U.S. (Study 1: Betterthan-average judgments among 2,118 participants; Study 2: knowledge overclaiming among 1,779 participants; Study 3: grandiose narcissism among 1,956 participants). A second set of three studies focused exclusively on better-than-average judgments, but validated the crosscultural universality of the results from the first set (Study 1: N = 17,874 from 16 Western countries; Study 2: N = 834,795 from 46 countries worldwide; Study 3: N = 209,364 from 51 US states). An additional set of two within-subjects experiments extended the self-enhancement findings from Christian religion to yoga practice (Hinduism; n = 477) and mindfulness meditation (Buddhism; n = 491). The collective results of this project are important because they fortify the universality of the self-esteem as social value principle as well as the universality of the selfcentrality breeds self-enhancement principle. Because many prominent theories in socialpersonality psychology build on those principles, the present project also speaks to the universality of those theories (e.g., terror management theory, self-affirmation theory, social identity theory, positive illusion theory, the self-concept enhancement tactician model, the selfevaluation maintenance model, and modern formulations of dissonance theory).
Publications
- (2018) Mind-Body Practices and the Self: Yoga and Meditation Do Not Quiet the Ego but Instead Boost Self-Enhancement. Psychological science 29 (8) 1299–1308
Gebauer, Jochen E.; Nehrlich, Andreas D.; Stahlberg, Dagmar; Sedikides, Constantine; Hackenschmidt, Anke; Schick, Doreen; Stegmaier, Clara A.; Windfelder, Cara C.; Bruk, Anna; Mander, Johannes
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618764621) - (2019) Agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and prosociality. Journal of personality and social psychology 117 (1) 142–165
Nehrlich, Andreas D.; Gebauer, Jochen E.; Sedikides, Constantine; Schoel, Christiane
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000190) - (2017). Christian self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 789-809
Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., & Schrade, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000140) - (2017). The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, e18-e39
Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., Schönbrodt, F. D., Bleidorn, W., Rentfrow, P. J., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000104)
