Previous research has indicated that memories can be
modified in conjunction with one’s attitudes, in particular,
political beliefs. The current study extended this finding by
focusing on the relationship between differing religious
beliefs and false memories for news events. We predicted
that religious people would be more inclined to remember
fabricated news events positively depicting religion and
less likely to remember events negatively depicting religion
compared to non-religious people. Opposite effects were
predicted for events depicting atheism. In contrast, we
found that religious people were more likely to falsely
remember both events depicting religion positively and
negatively compared to non-religious individuals.
However, the extent to which individuals felt positively
about the events interacted with religious beliefs to predict
reported false memories. Religious individuals were more
likely to remember events if they felt positively about them
whereas atheists were more likely to remember events if
they felt negatively about them