Content uploaded by Rimma Teper
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Rimma Teper on Jul 31, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
This article was downloaded by:[McGregor, Ian]
On: 15 July 2008
Access Details: [subscription number 794859089]
Publisher: Psychology Press
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Basic and Applied Social Psychology
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t775648090
Religious Zeal and the Uncertain Self
Ian McGregor a; Reeshma Haji a; Kyle A. Nash a; Rimma Teper a
aYork University, Toronto, Canada
Online Publication Date: 01 April 2008
To cite this Article: McGregor, Ian, Haji, Reeshma, Nash, Kyle A. and Teper,
Rimma (2008) 'Religious Zeal and the Uncertain Self', Basic and Applied Social
Psychology, 30:2, 183 — 188
To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/01973530802209251
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01973530802209251
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction,
re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be
complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be
independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,
demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or
arising out of the use of this material.
Downloaded By: [McGregor, Ian] At: 20:37 15 July 2008
Religious Zeal and the Uncertain Self
Ian McGregor, Reeshma Haji, Kyle A. Nash, and Rimma Teper
York University, Toronto, Canada
In two studies, personal uncertainty threats caused compensatory religious zeal. In
Study 1 an academic uncertainty manipulation heightened conviction for religious
beliefs and support for religious warfare. In Study 2 a relationship uncertainty manipu-
lation caused non-Muslim’s to derogate Islam. Together, these findings demonstrate
that two aspects of religious zeal—conviction for one’s own beliefs and derogation of
others’—are caused by personal uncertainty.
The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an
inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implac-
able stand is directed more against the doubt within than
the assailant without.
Eric Hoffer, 1954, p. 41
Some Christians were thrown to the lions by Romans,
but far more were killed by other Christians over dis-
agreements about the precise extent of Jesus’ divinity
(Durant, 1944). That people should so readily kill for
their religious beliefs seems absurd to the outside
observer. Yet religiously animated killings perennially
blight human history. Still today, religious zeal
continues to inspire killing in the Middle East and else-
where. What is the psychological appeal of religious
zeal? The present research investigates the idea that
religious zeal is appealing because it helps people cope
with personal uncertainty.
Uncertainty has been identified as the most basic
cause of anxiety in humans, and indeed in all verte-
brates. When an important goal is at risk of being
blocked, but the organism is motivated to remain
oriented toward the goal, an uncertain motivational
state results in which approach and avoidance tenden-
cies are simultaneously active. It is specifically this
uncertain predicament that, if not resolved, results in
the experience of anxiety (Gray & McNaughton, 2000).
Threats that are more certain, in contrast, activate dif-
ferent responses that are mediated by different brain
systems. This important distinction between uncertain
and certain threats is illustrated by the way a hungry,
foraging rat responds to the smell of a cat (with anxiety)
versus the actual presence of a cat (with fear). A hungry
rat that smells a cat will continue to forage but will do
so with periodic, vigilant, scanning behaviors that are
relieved by anxiolytic drugs but not panicolytic drugs.
In contrast, a rat confronted with an actual cat will
show unconflicted fight, flight, or freeze reactions that
are relieved by panicolytic drugs but not anxiolytic
drugs.
In our research we use two experimental manipula-
tions to induce a state of uncertainty in undergraduate
psychology students. The first involves asking them to
summarize an extremely complicated paragraph about
a statistics procedure. We describe it as a common tool
in psychology. We do not tell them that the paragraph is
taken out of context from an advanced graduate text,
with random sections deleted to make it bewildering to
read. In a pilot study, after participants had completed
either this bewildering statistics task or the simple con-
trol condition task, they rated how the manipulation
had made them feel, using a 5-point scale. Participants
reported that the difficult statistics manipulation made
them feel significantly more uncertain (M¼2.66) than
in the control condition (M¼1.68), t(113) ¼4.98,
p<.0005. Moreover, this effect on uncertainty was
stronger than for any of the other adjectives assessed:
good (p<.005), successful (p<.005), stupid (p<.05),
happy (p<.05), smart (p<.05), likeable (ns), empty
Correspondence should be sent to Ian McGregor, York University,
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. E-mail:
ianmc@yorku.ca
BASIC AND APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, 30:183–188, 2008
Copyright #Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0197-3533 print=1532-4834 online
DOI: 10.1080/01973530802209251
Downloaded By: [McGregor, Ian] At: 20:37 15 July 2008
(p<.05), meaningful (ns), anxious (ns), ashamed (ns),
insecure (ns), lonely, (ns), out of control (ns). The only
other adjectives that came close were frustrated
(p<.001) and confused (p<.001), both of which are
closely related to the experience of uncertainty. The
effect on reported uncertainty also remained statistically
significant (p<.001), with all the other adjectives
included as covariates.
In the second study, we rely on a manipulation of
uncertainty that has been shown in past research to
cause personal uncertainty but not general negative
affect or lowered self-worth (McGregor, Zanna,
Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). Thus, in addition to having
strong face validity, the two manipulations of personal
uncertainty have demonstrated past specificity for
uncertainty related affect. Moreover, they are theoreti-
cally close to the very basic uncertainty processes
described by Gray and McNaughton (2000). In both
studies, participants are confronted with goal impe-
dances that can not be simply fled from. Psychology stu-
dents know that statistics is an important part of their
chosen major, and dilemmas, by definition, involve goal
conflicts that one feels caught up in. Although the
uncertainty manipulations in both studies quite likely
have downstream effects on a wide variety of negative
thoughts in diverse content areas, there is good theoreti-
cal and empirical support for their primary effect on
uncertainty.
The dependent variables in the two studies assessed
aspects of religious zeal. Zeal refers to tenacious con-
viction and intolerance of dissent for an idealistic
cause (McGregor, Gailliot, Vasquez, & Nash, 2007;
McGregor & Marigold, 2003; McGregor, Nail,
Marigold, & Kang, 2005). Social commentators and
biographers have long observed that zeal erupts during
periods of personal or cultural turbulence. Hitlers
prototypical zeal, for example, coalesced during a
phase of intense personal and national chaos, and
the rise of fascism leading up to the Second World
War has been similarly attributed to developmental,
economic, and national insecurity (Adorno, Frenkel-
Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Fromm, 1941;
Muslin, 1992). Personal uncertainty, in particular,
has been implicated as an important cause of extreme
and rigid patterns of thinking and acting (e.g.,
Baumeister, 1991; Durkheim, 1951; Kruglanski, 1989;
McGregor, 2003, 2004). Correlational research has
found links between various measures of uncertainty-
aversion and extremity of conservative ideology
(Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003), and
experimental research has found that zealous reactions
are aroused by, and mask, personal uncertainty
(McGregor, 2006b; McGregor & Marigold, 2003;
McGregor et al., 2001, 2005; van den Bos, Poortvliet,
Maas, Miedema, & van den Ham, 2005).
Our research focuses on personal uncertainty as a
cause of religious zeal. Extreme instances of religious
zeal also tend to erupt during personal and historical
periods of heightened uncertainty, when identities are
conflicted or threatened by competing worldviews
(Armstrong, 2000; Durant, 1950; James, 1958; McCann,
1999). Surprisingly, however, there is no controlled
experimental evidence implicating personal uncertainty
as a cause of religious zeal. Experiments have found that
other psychological threats can arouse belief in God,
afterlife, and supernatural agency (Kay, Gaucher,
Napier, Callan, & Laurin, in press; Norenzayan &
Hansen, 2006; Willer, in press) and that religious contro-
versy causes particularly extreme negative feelings
among people who are most averse to uncertainty (van
den Bos, van Ameijde, & van Gorp, 2006; see also
van den Bos, 2001). Our research, however, is the first
to assess religious zeal as a function of experimentally
manipulated personal uncertainty. In Study 1 we mani-
pulate academic uncertainty and assess participants’
subsequent zeal for their own religious beliefs. In Study
2, for multimethod convergence we manipulate relation-
ship uncertainty and assess participants’ subsequent
derogation of others’ religious beliefs. Together, the
two studies investigate both sharp edges of religious
zeal: rigid conviction about personal opinions and dero-
gation of competing claims.
STUDY 1
Method
Twenty male
1
volunteers in a large 2nd-year personality
psychology course used electronic ‘‘clicker’’ devices to
1
Women also participated, but with null effects, jtsj<1. Whereas
for men random assignment resulted in 10 participants per condition,
for women it resulted in 25 participants in the control condition but
only 16 in the experimental condition, suggesting differential attrition
(clicker pick-up was anonymous and participants could stop respond-
ing without being identified). Women may have been more threatened
by the statistics materials than men. Only 28%of women, as compared
to 70%of men, rated the control condition materials as ‘‘extremely
easy’’ or ‘‘very easy.’’ The differential attrition and difficulty ratings
suggest that, perhaps because of the stereotype threat that women
associate with math (see Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999), female stu-
dents may have found the statistics-related uncertainty materials too
threatening to complete. This post hoc exclusion of women because
of differential attrition in the two conditions is a limitation of Study
1. Past research under more controlled circumstances, however, has
found the Study 1 uncertainty threat to cause other kinds of nonreli-
gious zeal among both men and women (McGregor et al., 2005, Study
3). Study 2 used a different manipulation of uncertainty to concep-
tually replicate the results of Study 1 with a sample that included both
women and men.
184 MCGREGOR ET AL.
Downloaded By: [McGregor, Ian] At: 20:37 15 July 2008
participate in the study. They anonymously picked up
their clickers at the beginning of class after being told
that the study would be related to that days lecture
material. Questions were projected at the front of a
lecture theatre, and clicker responses were wirelessly
recorded on a central computer. After indicating their
gender, participants viewed a list of prevalent religious
orientations and indicated which they most identified
with. Only participants who indicated definitive
religious orientations were retained for the study—two
who identified as ‘‘Pagan’’ and one who identified as
‘‘Other’’ were not included.
Participants randomly assigned to the uncertainty
condition read over an extremely difficult passage
taken out of context from a graduate statistics text.
It was laden with imposing mathematical formulae
and statistical symbols and truncated prematurely to
render it incomprehensible. Participants were given
4 min to read it, to try their best to understand it,
and then to indicate how easy it was for them to
understand. Response options were skewed as follows
to create the expectation that the passage should be
easily understood: 1 (extremely easy), 2 (very easy),
3(easy), and 4 (hard). Participants randomly assigned
to the control condition received the same instructions
as participants in the uncertainty condition, except
they read a simple introductory passage from an
undergraduate statistics text instead of the difficult
one. (The materials for both conditions were on the
back side of the lecture outline and had been shuffled
and distributed at the beginning of the class.) This
uncertainty manipulation targeted undergraduate
psychology students’ common uncertainty about their
math and statistic ability. In past research with
psychology student participants this manipulation
has caused self-reported confusion and defensive con-
viction for opinions about abortion, capital punish-
ment, suicide bombing, and the U.S. invasion of
Iraq (McGregor & Jordan, 2007; McGregor, Nail
et al., 2005).
After the uncertainty manipulation, participants
spent a few minutes using their clickers to answer
questions about lecture topics. This delay was pro-
vided to allow time for defensive zeal reactions to
emerge (Wichman, Brunner, & Weary, in press).
And then for the dependent variable participants then
rated their agreement with eight statements about
their religious zeal (a¼.75): I am confident in my
belief system; I aspire to live and act according to
my belief system; My belief system is grounded in
objective truth; Most people would agree with my
belief system if they took the time to understand it
rather than just relying on stereotypes about it; If
my belief system were being publicly criticized I would
argue to defend it; I would support a war that
defended my belief system; If it came down to it I
would sacrifice my life to defend my belief system;
In my heart I believe that my belief system is more
correct than others’. Ratings were made on the follow-
ing 5 point scale: 5 (strongly agree), 4 (agree), 3
(neither agree nor disagree), 2 (disagree), and 1
(strongly disagree). Participants were explicitly
instructed to refer to their identified religious
orientation when answering each question.
Results
Religious belief system identifications were 5%Muslim,
10%Buddhist, 20%Jewish, 20%Atheist, and 45%
Christian. The manipulation check revealed that parti-
cipants in the academic uncertainty condition rated the
statistics passage as ‘‘hard’’ (M¼3.70), but in the con-
trol condition they rated it as ‘‘very easy’’ (M¼2.20),
t(18) ¼4.57, p<.001, d¼2.15. As predicted, on the
main dependent variable participants in the academic
uncertainty condition reported more overall religious
zeal (M¼3.60) than participants in the control con-
dition (M¼3.04), t(18) ¼2.40, p<.03, d¼1.13. More-
over, and particularly disturbing, exploratory analyses
revealed that participants in the academic uncertainty
condition reported that they were significantly more
willing to support a war that defended their religious
beliefs (M¼3.00) than participants in the control con-
dition (M¼1.80), t(18) ¼2.45, p<.03, d¼1.15. Thus,
not only did the academic uncertainty manipulation
cause participants to tend to ‘‘agree’’ with zealous state-
ments about their religious beliefs, it further moved
them toward equivocal ‘‘neither agree nor disagree’’
acceptance of religious war from their usual and
more pacific ‘‘disagree’’ stance. Study 2 conceptually
replicates and extends the results of Study 1 with male
and female participants and provides multimethod
convergence.
STUDY 2
Whereas Study 1 assessed zeal about participants own
religious beliefs, Study 2 assessed the tendency to dero-
gate others’ religious beliefs. Specifically it assessed non-
Muslim’s tendency to derogate Islam. Exaggerated con-
sensus and intolerance of dissent are cardinal features of
zeal (McGregor et al., 2001; 2005). Uncertainty not only
motivates endorsement of extremes but also motivates
delusion about how objective those extremes are and
derogation of dissenters (McGregor & Jordan, 2007;
McGregor et al., 2001). Indeed, delusional consensus
was reflected in the Study 1 finding that after the aca-
demic uncertainty threat, participants rated their
RELIGIOUS ZEAL 185
Downloaded By: [McGregor, Ian] At: 20:37 15 July 2008
religious beliefs as particularly objective and likely to
garner the agreement of others.
In Study 2 we focus on uncertainty-motivated
derogation of dissenting religious views. Non-Muslim
participants ruminated about a relationship dilemma
ongoing in their lives and then evaluated Islam. We
expected the uncertainty manipulation to cause dero-
gation of Islam.
Method
Thirty-four female and 19 male non-Muslim under-
graduates received either course credit or $5 for their
participation. The experiment was advertised as explor-
ing ‘‘relationships, opinions, personality, and deci-
sions’’ and was administered on computers in private
cubicles in lab sessions with as many as 6 participants
at a time. After answering gender, demographic, and
personality questions that took approximately 10 min
to complete, participants were randomly assigned to
describe either a currently unresolved relationship
dilemma of their own (uncertainty condition) or a
relationship dilemma a friend was facing, for which
the participant had a clear and certain opinion about
what the friend should do (control condition). All part-
icipants were allocated 3 min to complete these materi-
als, after which the computer automatically began the
next portion of the experiment. Uncertainty and con-
trol condition materials were adapted from McGregor
et al. (2001).
The main dependent variable was then assessed
after 3 min of filler materials that provided the delay
required for the onset of zealous reactions to uncertainty
(Wichman et al., in press). Participants rated their agree-
ment with the following statements about Islam: Most
people who practice Islam value peace; Equality is an
important concept in Islam; Islam promotes essentially
the same good values as other world religions; The
Qur’an and Bible contain similar stories; Islam pro-
motes religious tolerance; Islam would be an okay religi-
on if it did not have such oppressive rules; There is
something in Islam that invites terrorism; Canada
should have more stringent immigration regulations
for people from Islamic countries; The majority of
people who practice Islam are religious zealots; Islam
is a cult on a larger scale. Participants rated each state-
ment on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree)to5(strongly
agree). The five positive and five reverse-scored negative
items were averaged for a measure of Islam evaluation
(a¼.80). To afford a comparison between religious zeal
and ingroup bias effects, the items assessing Islam
evaluation were mirrored by a counterbalanced block
of 10 questions that assessed participants’ evaluation
of Canada. For the main analysis, we regressed Islam
evaluation on manipulated uncertainty condition, with
Canada evaluation and gender as covariates (neither
covariate interacted with condition, jtsj<1).
2
Results
Islam evaluations were significantly more negative in the
uncertainty condition (M¼3.24) than in the control
condition (M¼3.53), t(49) ¼2.16, p<.05, d¼.62. It is
important to emphasize that this uncertainty effect was
significant even when attitudes toward Canada (which
were not affected by the uncertainty manipulation;
p>.17) were statistically controlled. Thus, uncertainty
specifically caused zeal about religious beliefs. This lack
of an uncertainty effect on Canadian national pride is
the usual finding in our laboratory (McGregor, Haji,
& Kang, in press). National pride may be too vague of
a phenomenon to serve as a topic of zeal for
Canadians (except perhaps during international hockey
competitions).
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological won-
der, and cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind,
in which the sand and grit of self-hood incline to disap-
pear. (James, 1902, p. 240)
Personal uncertainty caused two aspects religious zeal.
In Study 1 academic uncertainty increased conviction
for religious beliefs and support for religious warfare.
In Study 2 relationship uncertainty caused derogation
of Islam among non-Muslims. These results extend the
range of defensive zeal research. Past research has found
that individuals respond to the same uncertainty manip-
ulations used in the present research with defensive zeal
about social issues (McGregor & Jordan, 2007;
McGregor & Marigold, 2003; McGregor et al., 2001;
2005). Our research demonstrates that uncertainty-
induced defensive zeal processes can also bias religious
convictions. Indeed, religious ideology may be a parti-
cularly reliable and attractive domain for defensive
zeal because religious ideals are difficult to objectively
2
Although the Gender Uncertainty interaction effect did not pre-
dict Islam evaluation, there was a marginal effect of gender on Islam
evaluation, such that women were marginally more negative toward
Islam (M¼3.28) than men did (M¼3.52), t(49) ¼1.75, p<.10,
d¼.50. This marginal tendency for non-Muslim women to like Islam
less than men is potentially interesting in its own right, but the null
Uncertainty Gender interaction effect is most important here, given
that Study 1 only used male participants. The Study 2 result shows that
at least one aspect of religious zeal after uncertainty occurs regardless
of gender, which is consistent with the absence of gender effects in past
research on zeal about nonreligious topics (e.g., McGregor et al.,
2001).
186 MCGREGOR ET AL.
Downloaded By: [McGregor, Ian] At: 20:37 15 July 2008
refute. As such, religious zeal can provide a reliable safe
haven of hopeful and certain ideals that one can focus
on to make the ‘‘sand and grit of selfhood’’ disappear
(James, 1902, p. 240). Our results help explain one piece
of the puzzle of why religious conflicts can be so intrac-
table. Religious zeal can be a motivated defense that
people seize onto quell self-uncertainty.
This is an important finding because most people
would likely be loathe to admit that the fervency of their
religious ideals might be, at least in part, a psychological
defense (McGregor, 2007). Moreover, given the social
cost of religious extremism, and the dire need for clear
illumination of the phenomenon, the direct causal
demonstrations in our research could be particularly
instructive.
At a more general level still, these findings add to a
growing body of research demonstrating that various
threats with links to uncertainty cause compensatory
conviction and zeal about various topics that are far
removed from the topics of the threats (reviewed in
McGregor, 2006a). All of the threats that cause such
defensive zeal reactions share a common property of
being experiential threats to important goals or values
from which one cannot easily disengage. All of the vari-
ous zeal reactions reflect unconflicted ideals or actions,
which can return the individual to an unconflicted state
of unmitigated approach-motivation (McGregor et al.,
2007). Ideals have been isolated, both theoretically and
empirically, as being closely linked with approach-
motivation processes (Amodio, Shah, Sigelman, Brazy,
& Harmon-Jones, 2004; Higgins, 1997). Accordingly,
we interpret the current results as reflecting a very basic
kind of compensatory approach-motivation that people
(and other animals; Sullivan, 2004) turn to for relief from
the anxiety that can result from unresolved conflict and
uncertainty. Future research assessing patterns of neural
activation after uncertainty threats are currently under
way to more directly assess this defensive approach-
motivation hypothesis.
REFERENCES
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford,
R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality New York: Harper.
Amodio, D. M., Shah, J. Y., Sigelman, H., Brazy, P. C., & Harmon-
Jones, E. (2004). Implicit regulatory focus associated with asym-
metrical frontal cortical activity. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology,40, 225–232.
Armstrong, K. (2000). The battle for God: A history of fundamentalism.
New York: Ballantine.
Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Escaping the self. New York: Basic Books.
Durant, W. (1944.) Caesar and Christ. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Durant, W. (1950). The age of faith. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A study in sociology. Glencoe, IL: The
Free Press.
Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston.
Gray, J. A., & McNaughton, N. (2000). The neuropsychology of anxi-
ety: An enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychol-
ogist,52, 1280–1300.
Hoffer, E. (1954). The passionate state of mind. New York: Harper and
Row.
James, W. (1958). The varieties of religious experience. New York:
Mentor. (Original work published 1902)
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003).
Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological
Bulletin, 129, 339–375.
Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K.
(in press). God and government: Testing a compensatory control
explanation for the support of external systems. Journal of Person-
ality and Social Psychology.
Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cog-
nitive and motivational bases. New York: Plenum.
McCann, S. J. H. (1999). Threatening times and fluctuations in
American church memberships. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin,25, 325–336.
McGregor, I. (2003). Defensive zeal: Compensatory conviction about
attitudes, values, goals, groups, and self-definition in the face of per-
sonal uncertainty. In S. Spencer, S. Fein, & M. Zanna (Eds.), Moti-
vated social perception: The Ontario Symposium (Vol. 9, pp. 73–92).
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
McGregor, I., & Marigold, D. C. (2003). Defensive zeal and uncertain
self: What makes you so sure? Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology,85, 838–852.
McGregor, I. (2004). Zeal, identity, and meaning: Going to extremes
to be one self. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski
(Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 182–
199). New York: Guilford.
McGregor, I. (2006a). Offensive defensiveness: Toward an integrative
neuroscience of compensatory zeal after mortality salience, personal
uncertainty, and other poignant self-threats. Psychological Inquiry,
17, 299–308.
McGregor, I. (2006b). Zeal appeal: The allure of moral extremes. Basic
and Applied Social Psychology,28, 343–348.
McGregor, I. (2007). Personal projects as compensatory convictions:
Passionate pursuit and the fugitive self. In B. R. Little, K.
Salmela-Aro, & S. D. Phillips (Eds.), Personal project pursuit:
Goals, action and human flourishing (pp. 171–195). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
McGregor, I., Gailliot, M. T., Vasquez, N., & Nash, K. A. (2007).
Ideological and personal zeal reactions to threat among people with
high self-esteem: Motivated promotion focus. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin,33, 1587–1599.
McGregor, I., & Jordan, C. H. (2007). The mask of zeal: Low implicit
self-esteem, and defensive extremism after self-threat. Self and Ident-
ity,6, 223–237.
McGregor, I., Haji, R., & Kang, S.-J. (in press). Can ingroup affir-
mation relieve outgroup derogation? Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology.
McGregor, I., Nail, P. R., Marigold, D. C., & Kang, S-J. (2005).
Defensive pride and consensus: Strength in imaginary numbers.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,89, 978–996.
McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., & Spencer, S. J. (2001).
Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going
to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-
chology,80, 472–488.
Muslin, H. (1992). Adolf Hitler: The evil self. Psychohistory Review,
20, 251–270.
RELIGIOUS ZEAL 187
Downloaded By: [McGregor, Ian] At: 20:37 15 July 2008
Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents
in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,32,
174–187.
Shrira, I., & Martin, L. L. (2005). Stereotyping, self-affirmation, and
the cerebral hemispheres. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
31, 846–856.
Spencer, S. J., Steele, c., & Quinn, D. M. (1999). Stereotype threat and
women’s math performance. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology,35, 4–28.
Sullivan, R. M. (2004). Hemispheric asymmetry in stress processing in
rat prefrontal cortex and the role of mesocortical dopamine. The
International Journal of the Biology of Stress,7, 131–143.
van den Bos, K. (2001). Uncertainty management: The influence of
uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,80, 931–941.
van den Bos, K., Poortvliet, P. M., Maas, M., Miedema, J., & van den
Ham, E.-J. (2005). An enquiry concerning the principles of cultural
norms and values: The impact of uncertainty and mortality salience
on reactions to violations and bolstering of cultural worldviews.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,41, 91–113.
van den Bos, K., van Ameijde, J., & van Gorp, H. (2006). On the psy-
chology of religion: The role of personal uncertainty in religious
worldview defense. Basic and Applied Social Psychology,28, 333–341.
Wichman, A. L., Brunner, R. P., & Weary, G. (in press). Immediate
and delayed effects of causal uncertainty inductions on uncertainty
accessibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Willer, R. (in press). No atheists in foxholes: Motivated reasoning
and religious ideology. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thorisdot-
tir (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system
justification.
188 MCGREGOR ET AL.
