Effect of Religious Priming on the Degree of Religiosity in Young Muslim Adults in Pakistan.

Abstract

Religion in Pakistan is a subject that is highly sensitive and thus, ignoring it would be unwise, especially since the impact that it has on the people, politics, social life and education is obvious. Previous research (Bargh & Morsella, 2008; Gilad & Kliger, 2008) has shown how priming, often in a religious context, has an unconscious effect on human behaviour. This study was conducted to experimentally test whether the priming has an effect on the degree of religiosity among young Pakistani adults between the ages of 18-25 (N=67; Females=41, Males=28). Participants were randomly assigned to either an Experimental (shown religious primers) or Control group (not shown anything) and were asked to complete a revised version of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (Fetzer, 1999) to measure their religiosity levels. Using an independent groups t-test (t= 1.289) via SPSS 17, it was found that no significant differences between the two groups’ responses existed (p=0.202; p<0.05). This illustrates that priming did not have any significant effect on the degrees of religiosity in the sample studied