Ejudice towards non-value-violating outgroups in Asians as it does in Westerners, the specific groups that are targeted for prejudice varies between cultures. Given that both cross-cultural similarities and differences in the effects of religious primes have been observed, it is unclear whether cultural differences can adequately explain the stark differences between these findings and the predominantly Euro-American literature. A convincing cultural explanation for the present null effects will require further experimentation and, most importantly, further theorizing on why religious primes may jir.2010.0097 be ineffective in cultural settings that are otherwise fairly religious. Nonetheless, these results do underline the importance of conducting research in different cultures, and of refraining from making sweeping statements regarding the nature and function of religious cognition on the basis of evidence derived from WP1066 custom synthesis monocultural samples.A Moderating Effect of Gender?Despite the failure to replicate in study 2, a further discussion of the marginal gender effect observed in study 1 is warranted. The observation that religious primes enhance outgroup derogation only in females was unexpected, and deviates significantly from previous observations of prime-induced prejudice. To our knowledge, only one piece of religious priming research has reported a significant effect of gender [72] and further research by this same group failed to replicate this male-specific priming effect [73]. We are unaware of any previous demonstration of females being more receptive to the effects of religious priming than males. If indeed it is genuine, there are several possible explanations for this result. Firstly, it is well-documented that women tend to be more religious than men [55, 74]. This gender difference is robust, and researchers have observed significant gender differences in a range of indices of religious commitment, including those relating to spirituality and belief in the supernatural [75] and thosePLOS ONE wcs.1183 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0147178 January 26,16 /Failure to Observe Different Effects of God and Religion Primes on Intergroup Attitudesrelating to religious practice and community involvement [76]. It is possible that supernatural and institutional religious schemas may be more readily activated in females than males, a phenomenon that should in turn strengthen the cascading activation of related moral and ingroup protective cognitions in response to God and religion primes respectively. However, the extant literature on religious priming does not indicate such differences, and few studies include gender as a moderator in their analyses. Given that this result did not replicate in a second sample, evidence for the effect is presently very limited, and it is prudent to conclude that the results of study 1 were spurious unless further instances of female-only religious priming effects are documented. Nonetheless, it is hoped that researchers in the field will be more inclined to test and discuss possible gender effects when investigating the effects of religious primes. Indeed, researchers in a related field have cautioned that “it may not be appropriate to generalize findings about the relationship between spirituality/religiosity and health from one form of spirituality/religiosity to another, across order Quisinostat denominations, or to assume effects are uniform for men and women” ([77] p. 2848). Such cautionary words may also apply to other outcomes, and given t.Ejudice towards non-value-violating outgroups in Asians as it does in Westerners, the specific groups that are targeted for prejudice varies between cultures. Given that both cross-cultural similarities and differences in the effects of religious primes have been observed, it is unclear whether cultural differences can adequately explain the stark differences between these findings and the predominantly Euro-American literature. A convincing cultural explanation for the present null effects will require further experimentation and, most importantly, further theorizing on why religious primes may jir.2010.0097 be ineffective in cultural settings that are otherwise fairly religious. Nonetheless, these results do underline the importance of conducting research in different cultures, and of refraining from making sweeping statements regarding the nature and function of religious cognition on the basis of evidence derived from monocultural samples.A Moderating Effect of Gender?Despite the failure to replicate in study 2, a further discussion of the marginal gender effect observed in study 1 is warranted. The observation that religious primes enhance outgroup derogation only in females was unexpected, and deviates significantly from previous observations of prime-induced prejudice. To our knowledge, only one piece of religious priming research has reported a significant effect of gender [72] and further research by this same group failed to replicate this male-specific priming effect [73]. We are unaware of any previous demonstration of females being more receptive to the effects of religious priming than males. If indeed it is genuine, there are several possible explanations for this result. Firstly, it is well-documented that women tend to be more religious than men [55, 74]. This gender difference is robust, and researchers have observed significant gender differences in a range of indices of religious commitment, including those relating to spirituality and belief in the supernatural [75] and thosePLOS ONE wcs.1183 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0147178 January 26,16 /Failure to Observe Different Effects of God and Religion Primes on Intergroup Attitudesrelating to religious practice and community involvement [76]. It is possible that supernatural and institutional religious schemas may be more readily activated in females than males, a phenomenon that should in turn strengthen the cascading activation of related moral and ingroup protective cognitions in response to God and religion primes respectively. However, the extant literature on religious priming does not indicate such differences, and few studies include gender as a moderator in their analyses. Given that this result did not replicate in a second sample, evidence for the effect is presently very limited, and it is prudent to conclude that the results of study 1 were spurious unless further instances of female-only religious priming effects are documented. Nonetheless, it is hoped that researchers in the field will be more inclined to test and discuss possible gender effects when investigating the effects of religious primes. Indeed, researchers in a related field have cautioned that “it may not be appropriate to generalize findings about the relationship between spirituality/religiosity and health from one form of spirituality/religiosity to another, across denominations, or to assume effects are uniform for men and women” ([77] p. 2848). Such cautionary words may also apply to other outcomes, and given t.
