The Effect of Religious and Non-religious Content in Social Support Message

Religious demographics are becoming increasingly diverse in the United States, including non-religious orientations. This increasing religious pluralism, along with the trend towards constant connectivity with social networks, creates a need to understand how religious differences can affect interpersonal communication. This is particularly important for more sensitive topics like providing social support after a death. The current study was designed to measure participants' evaluations of social support messages that vary on both religious content and communicative medium, as well as collect religious demographics and several religious measures. The study sample contained 221 participants recruited from Amazon Mturk. Participants were asked to recall the death of a person important to them, and then evaluate one of four support messages. Results indicated that certain religious demographics and non-religious participants preferred support messages with content congruent to their own belief systems, although religious individuals rated all support messages more positively regardless of message content.