Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Do forgiving God primes strengthen support for state-sanctioned punishment?Laurin et al (2012) found that beliefs in powerful, intervening Gods (both in general and when made salient) reduce people’sendorsement of state-sanctioned punishment. In light of this, we investigated whether the manner in which God intervenes (viaforgiveness or punishment) influences people’s endorsement of state-sanctioned punishment.Across four studies we explored a) whether priming participants with a forgiving God and b) whether salient, forgiving Godbeliefs increase endorsements of state-sanctioned punishment. The rationale being that a forgiving God will lead people toview punishment as a responsibility that lies with them rather than one outsourced to God. Our results revealed no evidence foreffects of forgiving God primes or salient forgiving god beliefs on endorsements of state-sanctioned punishment. We discussthe implications of these findings for extant theories of religious prosociality and proportionality-based accounts of morality.