Thinking of God leads to increased risk taking – study

Share this

Leaps of faith? Gambling on Sundays may be more risky than churchgoers are aware, because, according to research by Radboud University, Netherlands scientists, activation of the concept of God in the minds of individuals increases their propensity to take risks.

“Risk taking is influenced by subtle environmental factors. It might not be a good idea to house a church service beside a casino, for example,” lead researcher Dr Kai Qin Chan of RU’s Department of Social and Cultural Psychology, told The Speaker.

Chan’s most recent research indicates that bringing the concept of God to the fore of people’s minds increases risk taking behavior, particularly when there is an incentive for gain.

The premise of the research was a hypothesis based on two fields of current research–recent psychological models that suggest religious belief provides a form of social control, and scientific findings that increased psychological control can lead to the formation fo riskier strategies. It made sense that these two fields of research could be brought together to show that religion could influence risk taking.

“We measured risk taking using a behavioral task,” Chan told us. “In this task, participants had to pump virtual balloons. With more ‘pumps’ they gave, the risk of explosion increases, but the chances of getting a larger reward increases as well, provided the balloon does not burst before they cashed in on their trial. We found that participants primed with God–for example, seeing the word ‘God’ briefly before doing the task–took more risk–they gave more pumps.”

All of the three studies conducted by the team showed that activating the God concept led to greater risk taking. The study participants were literally “taking a leap of faith,” according to the researchers.

However, this increased risk taking behavior was found to present only when participants felt they were in control of the situation.

“When we made one group of participants feel that they were not in control of things–i.e., we decreased their sense of psychological control–albeit momentarily–we found that these people look less risks, even when primed with God. This implies that priming with God (without any manipulation of psychological control) must have increased psychological control, because when we disrupted this process, risk taking returned to baseline levels.”

Chan’s research enabled him to make some educated guesses about the relationship between religion, morality and risk taking, but he was clear that questions of such relationships were difficult to answer, and that other great research was being done in those areas.

“I think much risk taking literature that examines how religion–e.g., religiosity–is related to lower risk taking may be an artifact of the measurement of risk taking,” said Chan.

“In these studies, sometimes investigators use measurements of risk taking that have an inherent moral component–for example, unprotected sex is risky, but it also has a tinge of one being morally loose. So, there are different domains of risk taking and we need to take them into account. Being risky in one domain does not necessarily translate into being risky in another, and because our notion of religion is so tightly linked with morality, risk-religion research needs to take into account the moral domains of risk taking as well.”

The research, the team found, contradicted certain other survey findings that religious people were less risk seeking than other people.

“Religion sometimes affects us in subtle ways,” observed Chan. “However, I do want to stress that I am not implying that religion is bad. Risk taking itself is not necessarily an evil, and I certainly do not want to say that religion makes people bad risk takers.”

The report, “Taking a Leap of Faith Reminders of God Lead to Greater Risk Taking,” was authored by Kai Qin Chan, Eddie Mun Wai Tong, and Yan Lin Tan of the National University of Singapore.