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Make love and lose your religion and virtue: Recalling sexual experience undermines spiritual intentions and moral behavior

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Rigo, Caroline [UCL] Uzarevic, Filip [UCL] Saroglou, Vassilis [UCL]

In contrast with traditional considerations, sexuality is often perceived today as being rather compatible with religion/spirituality and morality. However, there may be some inherent opposition between (a) sexuality (thoughts, affects, pleasure) and (b) religion/spirituality (attitudes, motives) and (interpersonal) morality (dispositions, behavior). The two imply, respectively, self-enhancement vs. self-transcendence, disinhibition vs. self-control, and disgust indifference vs. sensitivity. We hypothesized that sexual experience attenuates spiritual and moral concerns and behaviors. In three online experiments, young adults were asked to recall a personal sexual experience. Compared to a control condition, sexual induction diminished spiritual behavioral intentions (Experiments 1 and 2), in particular among those with high individual disinhibition (Experiment 1), as well as behaviors of prosociality and integrity/honesty (Experiment 3). The effects were independent of individual religiousness/spirituality. These findings suggest that combining sexual pleasure with self-transcendence and moral perfection, even if a legitimate ideal, is not an easy enterprise.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type Accès mixte
Publication date 2016
Language Anglais
Journal information "Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion" - Vol. 55, no. 1, p. 23-39 (2016)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc. ((United States) Hoboken)
issn 0021-8294
e-issn 1468-5906
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
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Bibliographic reference Rigo, Caroline ; Uzarevic, Filip ; Saroglou, Vassilis. Make love and lose your religion and virtue: Recalling sexual experience undermines spiritual intentions and moral behavior. In: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 55, no. 1, p. 23-39 (2016)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/161517