SOCIAL INFLUENCE AMONG EQUALS AS A MEDIATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS/SUPERNATURAL BELIEFS AND EXPERIENCES
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Abstract
Social psychology has studied the influence of people on each other for the formation and consolidation of religious/supernatural beliefs and experiences. Experimental studies can examine the influence of specific variables on this process. By replicating and expanding two British studies, our study investigated the effects of verbal suggestion on the testimony and attribution of meaning to an apparently supernatural event. 187 Brazilian adult volunteers were subjected to various forms of verbal suggestion while watching a video in which a false medium (actually a magician) simulated a supernatural achievement. The memory about the video, religious/supernatural beliefs, and the tendency to dissociation were also investigated. The results include a greater impact of horizontal influences (coming from a false volunteer who watched the video with the real volunteers) to the detriment of vertical influences (from the authority figure represented by the false medium) on memory and formation of religious/supernatural beliefs about the video. Prior beliefs tended to guide the attribution of causality about the video content. Implications for understanding the formation and consolidation of religious/supernatural beliefs and experiences are discussed, including such as believers may exert greater influence among themselves than that coming from religious leaders.
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