| The current dissertation addresses issues concerning the influence that cognitively accessible religious thoughts have on moral performance. According to Trafimow and Rice (2008), there are two influencing factors on moral performance---consistency and strategy. This dissertation presents the argument that although moral strategy performance has been extensively studied, consistency in moral choices has not. Furthermore, religious moral performance studies have been correlational, disallowing a determination of causation between religion and moral performance. Finally, levels of belief intensity (how involved a person is in her religion) have been demonstrated by Hunter (2000) to have varying relationships with moral performance. Therefore, the current study manipulated the cognitive accessibility of religion with a prime, measured belief intensity, and calculated strategy and consistency values using Potential Performance Theory (Trafimow & Rice, 2008). Belief intensity was positively correlated with moral performance, but only when a prime was present. Religious persons with low belief (LB) intensity were not as consistent with their moral choices as people with high belief (HB) intensity. Religious persons with LB intensity, when primed with religious thoughts, were not more consistent in their moral choices post-religious prime than pre-religious prime. Religious persons with HB intensity did not have any improvement in consistency levels after they were primed. Finally, HB participants' true successes and LB participants' true successes did not benefit from a prime. In summary, simply priming participants with religion did not change consistency or strategy. However, HB intensity participants were more consistent overall than LB participants, regardless of religious prime. |
