Document Type

Honors Thesis

Major

Psychology

Advisor(s)

Jordan LaBouff

Committee Members

Susan Bredlau, Jennifer Blossom

Graduation Year

May 2025

Publication Date

Fall 12-2023

Abstract

This project is a replication of a study by Johnson, Rowatt, and LaBouff (2010) that subliminally primed American Christian participants to think about Christianity subconsciously and found increased prejudice towards Black Americans. This study is often cited to support the claim that “thinking about religion makes people more prejudiced,” despite not having been replicated effectively. Replicability is crucial to make appropriate claims. We replicated the original study with updated explicit priming methods as well as updated racial prejudice scales with a recruited national sample of 500 white American Christians through Prolific.ac. Participants were randomly assigned to a priming condition, where they are asked to reflect on their identity as a Christian, American, an American Christian, or a neutral control group. After completing the prime, they were asked to complete a behavioral measure where participants were given three charities to which they were asked to donate a dollar to. They choose which charity to donate to such as, The Red Cross, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Christian Foundation and could decide how much of their dollar they would like to send to each organization. No donation was actually made, and participants would be informed of the deception in debriefing. Next, they responded to a series of prejudice measures through a Likert scale. We hypothesized that when American Christians are primed to think about their Christian identity or their Christian American identity, they will report greater prejudice toward Black Americans.

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