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Judgments of Meaning in Life, Religious Beliefs, and the Experience of Cognitive (Dis)Fluency
Author(s) -
Davis William E.,
Hicks Joshua A.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/jopy.12159
Subject(s) - psychology , meaning (existential) , fluency , cognition , social psychology , religious experience , developmental psychology , psychotherapist , epistemology , philosophy , mathematics education , neuroscience
The primary aim of the current studies was to test whether religiousness interacted with self‐reported levels of meaning in life ( MIL ) to predict the ease or difficulty in judging one's MIL , the search for meaning itself, and religious doubt. Undergraduate students in Study 1 ( N = 111) and adult participants recruited online in Study 2 ( N = 206) completed measures of religious beliefs, MIL , cognitive fluency related to MIL , and related variables. Study 3 merged these data sets. In S tudy 4 ( N = 255), online participants completed measures of religious beliefs, cognitive fluency related to religious beliefs, and MIL . Studies 1 and 2 showed that highly religious people with lower MIL reported greater difficulty making their MIL judgments than other people. Study 3 showed that they were also more likely to search for MIL and that disfluency mediated this effect. Study 4 demonstrated that they also reported more difficult judgments of religious beliefs and more religious doubts than their religious peers with high MIL . The current studies demonstrate that the experience of ease or difficulty associated with MIL judgments represents an important yet largely unexamined aspect of MIL . Our findings have implications for understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying responses to meaning threats.